THE METRE OF MACBETH 



ITS RELATION TO SHAKESPEARE'S 
EARLIER AND LATER WORK 



DAVID LAURANCE CHAMBERS, A.M. 



PUBLISHED BY 
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



PRINCETON 

THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 

I903 



THE LIBRARY Ot'J 

CONGRESS, 
Two Cwioij RechivebJ 

19G3 

Cr*VHfOHT BMTBV 



TTT so 8^' 



— ^e 



Copyright, 1903, 
By David Laurance Chambers. 



CONTENTS 



I. Prose 7 

II. Rime 10 

III. Blank Verse 23 

A. Stress 24 

B. Substitution 33 

C. Feminine Syllables 40 

D. End-Stopped and Run-On Lines 48 

E. Light and Weak Endings 53 

F. Speech Endings 57 

IV. Summary 59 

Appendix 67 

Tables for Twenty-six Plays 68 

Bibliography 68 



PREFACE. 

THIS little book had its origin in a paper prepared in 
the spring of 1902 for a Seminar course in Macbeth, 
under the direction of Professor Thomas Marc Parrott. 
My design had been to present concretely a few of the 
metrical peculiarities of the play under discussion, and 
to show as briefly as possible its general place in Shake- 
speare's versification. But at the very threshold of 
investigation I found that the subject of metrical changes, 
which I imagined to have been worked out with scien- 
tific definiteness and completeness, was still largely a 
matter of dispute and conflicting testimony, that results 
with the most unreliable support were frequently ac- 
cepted as established facts, that the tabulations which 
had been made were widely scattered, that the excellent 
work of German critics in this field was ignored by 
most English writers, and, finally, that Macbeth itself 
offered unexpected metrical difficulties. I became 
gradually involved in a series of intricate problems, 
and so this thesis grew far beyond the bounds of its 
original purpose. 

It now attempts to show when certain metrical phe- 
nomena appeared in Shakespeare's work, why they 
appeared (as far as that can be determined), and what 
stage they had reached in Macbeth. To carry out this 
purpose statistics have been gathered from various 
sources, criticised and elaborated. In many instances 
only the figures for the total number of occurrences 
could be obtained, and these had to be converted into 
percentages before it was possible to base safe general- 
izations upon them. 



6 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

The essay endeavors also to set forth, more fully 
than has been hitherto attempted, the metrical evidence 
in regard to the authorship of disputed passages in 
Macbeth. 

I desire to acknowledge my great indebtedness to 
Professor Parrott for the illuminating suggestion and 
careful criticism with which he has aided me at all 
stages of my work, and to Dr. W. P. Woodman for his 
kindness in reading the proof. 

David Laurance Chambers. 

Princeton, N. J. 



PROSE. 

The broadest possible division of a Shakespearean 
play is into prose and verse. Evidently the relative 
proportions of this division in the different dramas will 
not serve as a general test for their chronological ar- 
rangement, dependent as is the amount of prose upon 
the extent of the comic element which the author desired 
to introduce, and upon the number and prominence of 
the prose-speaking characters. Says Mr. Henry Sharpe, 1 
"The time at which the plays were written does not 
appear to have much to do with the quantity. Roughly 
speaking, there is least prose in the early and late plays, 
and most in those in the middle as to date." In partic- 
ular cases the ratio is sometimes suggestive. From the 
very start Shakespeare employed a liberal admixture 
of prose in the comedies, especially for parts of low 
humour. 2 In his first notable and undisputed tragedy, 
Romeo and Juliet, there is a considerable sprinkling of it. 
But for some reason or other (perhaps the influence of 
Marlowe's unvarying grandiloquence in Edward II.) he 
avoided its use in the histories until i Henry IV. 3 Later 
on, he extended its range of effects to include even 
Hamlet's imaginative discourse {Hamlet, II. 2. 304 ff.), 
though the introduction of verse in a prose-scene always 
marks a rise to a higher dramatic pitch, a higher emo- 
tional plane, verse being the natural language of emotion. 

1 Transactions of the New Shakspere Society 1880-6, p. 525. 

2 There are over 1,000 lines of prose in Love' 's Labour 's Lost, spoken mainly 
by Sir Nathaniel, Holofernes, Dull, Costard, Moth and Jaquenetta. But the 
proportion varies in the comedies from The Comedy of Errors, one-eighth 
prose, to Merry Wives, nine-tenths prose. 

3 With the single exception of Richard LIL., I. 4. 



8 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

In Macbeth prose makes its appearance in four 
places, though only one of these (V. i) is a " prose- 
scene " properly so called. In Act I., Scene 5, it is 
used for Macbeth's letter to his Lady ; prose is the 
normal medium for letters, proclamations, and other 
written documents. 1 The Porter's rhythmical 2 speech 
(II. 3) is a good example of the use of prose for purposes 
of comedy, though, as befits the tone of the play, the 
jesting here is rather grim. Poor men and clowns are 
regularly speakers of prose in Shakespeare. Macduff, 
except for two lines, descends to the level of the Porter, 
because, as Sharpe frames the law, 3 " if an educated 
man who usually speaks metre meets a poor man, both 
speak prose." Being the language of every-day life 
prose contributes much to that effect of the reflux of 
the human world upon the fiendish which De Quincey 
makes the rationale of the scene. With the subsidence 
of the Porter and the return to serious business at the 
entrance of Macbeth, prose gives way to blank verse. 
Act IV., Scene 2, illustrates how prose lowers the dra- 
matic pitch for the sake of emotional relief. After Lady 
Macduff's bitter discussion of her husband's conduct 
with Ross, in impassioned verse, she begins a gentle 
word-play with her son in prose, half-sad, half-merry. 
It is not, however, altogether prose. LI. 40, 41 are 
surely prose, but 11. 42, 43 are as surely verse. Prose 
is resumed in 1. 44 and thence continued as far as 1. 64. 
This rather curious intermingling has led Professor 
Liddell 4 to question the genuineness of the prose parts. 

1 See Sharpe, p. 557. The only exceptions, he says, are Titus And., II. 
3.268 ff. ; All's Well, III. 4.4 ff„ IV. 3.252 ft. 

2 See Dowden in T. JV. S. S. 1874, p. 276. 

3 p. 553. 

i Elizabethan Edition, p. 165. 



PROSE 9 

He would have Lady Macduff's words in 11. 42, 43 
follow immediately on 1. 37, and close the dialogue, and 
he thinks that this excision would relieve the play of 
an inhuman and distorted representation of childhood. 
Rather it would deprive the play of a most dramatic 
and most Shakespearean contrast between the prattle of 
family life and the tragic summons to instant death. 
The boy is no more precocious than Shakespeare's 
other children, than, say, the Duke of York in Richard 
III. And, finally, this alternation of prose and verse 
is by no means unique. For another example see 
Henry V., IV. 8. The arrival of the messenger 
with his awful tidings requires a re-heightening of 
the pitch and a return to verse. Messengers natu- 
rally and regularly speak in metre. In Act V., 
Scene 1, the Doctor and the Gentlewoman discuss 
Lady Macbeth's mental perturbation in prose. The 
conversation consists of simple professional question- 
ing and a direct report of symptoms. 1 The tone 
is low. It might seem strange at first sight that Shake- 
speare should employ prose in the sleep-walking scene 
which follows, where the dramatic excitement is surely 
intense. The attempt to explain this apparent vagary 
has led to some extraordinary criticism. 2 But in reality 
it is no vagary. Shakespeare deems prose peculiarly 
appropriate to the broken utterance of madness (real or 
assumed) in Hamlet and Lear, of frenzy in Othello, of 
intoxication in Antony and Cleopatra? and so also of the 

1 See Delius, Jahrbuc -h V., p. 267. 

2 Hudson, for example, says : " I suspect that the matter of this scene is 
too sublime, too austerely grand, to admit of anything so artificial as the meas- 
ured language of verse ; and that the Poet, as from an instinct of genius, felt 
that any attempt to heighten the effect by any arts of delivery would impair it." 
Quoted in Furness's Variortun, p. 259. 

3 See Hamlet II. 2.171 ff., III. 1.103 ff., IV. 5.172 ff. ; Lear, III. 4.51 ff., 
IV. 1.58 ff., IV. 6.131 ff. ; Othello, IV. 1.36 ff. ; Ant. and Cleo., II. 7-28 ff. 



io THE METRE OF MACBETH 

irrationality of " slumbery agitation " in Macbeth. The 
pity and terror of the scene are brought out in the 
Doctor's blank-verse speech at the end, which, however, 
contrary to the general rule, indicates a falling-off in the 
emotional intensity. The function performed by prose in 
the other great tragedies — that of introducing variety 
in the composition — is, in Macbeth, largely performed 
by lyrical passages in a different metre. 

II. 

RIME. 

TABLE OF RIMES. 1 



Play. 



Love's Labour's Lost 
Comedy of Errors . 
Merchant of Venice . 

Henry V 

Hamlet 

Othello 

Lear 

Macbeth 

Ant. and Cleo. . . . 

Winter's Tale . . . 

Tempest 



5.5 



v 2 
*- c c 






62.2 
I9.4 

4-6 
3.2 
2.7 
3-2 

3-4 

5-8 

• 7 

.0 



3.5 



550 
216 

85 
62 
64 
78 
70 
108 
34 






«P5 



1. 12 

5-3 
22. 

30.9 

36.8 

30.5 
29.6 
I4.9 
76.1 

inf. 



S 

5 . 

O c 
-° ... 

a * 



66 
o 

34 
2 
8 
o 
o 
121 
o 





U 














a 


d 



c 
c 


u 

(30 


in 


< 


en 


p 


36 


242 


42 


187 


O 


64 


O 


98 


9 


4 


O 


2 


8 





14 


O 


60 


81 rim 


es in p 


lay 


25 











97 








2 


ill?) 








1 ' 


6 













choru 


s: 32 r 


lme- 


57 


lines 






5o 


masqu 


e: 54 r 


lme- 




lines 


12 son 


g 



Of the metrical portion of the play the most com- 
prehensive division is into rimed lines and unrimed 
lines, or blank verse. The percentages of the rimed 



1 The per cent, column is from Konig, p. 131. The rest are from Fleay's 
Tables in Ingleby, p. 99 ff. with some corrections. I have verified their figures 
for Macbeth and calculated the ratio column on the basis of Fleay's Figures. 
The eleven rimes in 1, 3, which Fleay counts as song, I should prefer to 
include without distinction in the short riming lines. 



RIME ii 

lines of less than five feet 1 in the different plays form 
no chronological criterion, as the introduction of such 
lines was contingent upon the character of the work 
Shakespeare had in hand, and very likely, too, upon 
the company having a popular singer. 2 It is as natural 
to find such rimes in The Tempest as in A Midstun- 
mer-Nighf s Dream. The speeches of the three weird 
sisters 3 are prevailingly tetrameter with a trochaic 
cadence, the rhythm which Shakespeare almost always, 
if not always, adopts in songs and in lyrical passages 
hardly to be told from songs. "That the individual 
verses do not all contain exactly the same number 
of syllables is obvious to the most careless reader; 
but the rhythmical equivalence of them never admits 
of doubt. The movement is as free and varied as 
that of popular rimes and jingles, and consequently 
as hard to deal with by rule-of-thumb scansion." 4 The 
fact that the speeches of Hecate and of the First Witch 5 
are in iambic measure creates, I think, a strong pre- 
sumption against their Shakespearean authorship. 
With the other arguments 6 impugning the genu- 
ineness of these speeches — their superfluous and incon- 
gruous character, etc. — we are not here concerned. 
Moreover, if Shakespeare wished to write iambics, 
Heaven save the foolish critic from believing that he 



1 I here include lines, themselves without rime, but in the midst of riming 
passages, e. g., I. 3.17. 

2 See Spedding, T. N. S. S. 1874, p. 29. 

8 I. 1. 1-7, ii, 12 ; I. 3.8-37; IV. 1.4-38, 44-47, 64-68, no, in. There 
are also a number of short trochaic unrimed lines of various length : I. 3.1-3, 
62-69 ; IV. 1-3, 107-109. 

K Manly, p. xxxii. 

5 III. 5-4-33 ; IV. 1.39-43, 125-132. 

8 Admirably stated by Mr. E. K. Chambers in the Arden Edition and Mr. 
C. H. Herford in the Eversley Edition. Mr. A. W. Verity in the Pitt Press 
Edition argues for the other side. 



1 2 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

could not do so! But it remains true that for some 
reason or other he seldom cared to employ the four- 
stress iambic couplet. The only other places where it 
occurs — except as an occasional variation in the midst 
of trochaics, as in the Epilogue to The Tempest — are 
in the Gower choruses in Pericles (undoubtedly not 
by Shakespeare), and in the mock prophecy in Lear 

III. 2.81 ff. (generally regarded as an interpola- 
tion, and in any event a parody on the familiar 
iambic verses known as" Chaucer's Prophecy"). 
Many iambic lines occur in the Duke's speech in 
Measure for Measure, III. 2.275 ff., but they are so 
interwoven with trochaic lines that it is difficult to 
determine the prevailing character of the rhythm, and, 
moreover, this is another passage the authenticity of 
which has been called in question. The same may be 
said of "Apemantus' Grace" in Timon, I. 2.63 ff. Not 
once is the iambic tetrameter to be discovered in a pas- 
sage which bears the unmistakable impress of Shake- 
speare's hand. Per contra, the trochaic tetrameter is 
found in Dumain's love-poem in Love's Labour s Lost, 

IV. 3.101-120, the songs of the fairies in A Midsummer - 
Nigh? s Dream, the casket rimes in The Merchant of 
Venice, the verses of Orlando, Touchstone, and Phoebe 
in As You Like It, III. 2.93 ff. and IV. 3.40 ff., Tom of 
Bedlam's jingle in Lear, III. 6.69 ff., Autolycus's song 
in The Winter s Tale, IV. 4.220 ff., and the masque in 

The Tempest, IV. 1.106 ff. 

What is more, the metre of these speeches of 
Hecate — dull, mechanical, regular, touched with favour 
and prettiness — is in striking and almost amusing con- 
trast with the grotesqueness, the freedom, the bold 
roughness of the colloquies and incantations of the 
weird sisters. 



RIME 13 

Now Thomas Middleton, whose connection (direct 
or indirect) with Macbeth is indicated by the interpola- 
tion in the text of two songs from his play, The Witch, 
was fond of the iambic tetrameter. He used it, for 
example, in the concluding portion of one of these same 
songs, "Come away, come away," sung by his Hecate 
in III. 3; in the Raynulph choruses in The Mayor of 
Queensboroiigh, I. 1 ; II. 1 ; IV. 2 ; in The Widow, III. 
1.22 if.; A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, IV. 1.162 ff. ; The 
Phoenix, V. 1. 317 ff. ; The World Tost at Tennis, second 
song. And that he was capable of writing as smoothly 
and as flatly as these Hecate speeches is proved 
by the following passage, 1 which, it will be noticed, 
concludes with a pentameter couplet exactly as in Mac- 
beth, III. 5 : 

" When Germany was overgrown 

With sons of peace too thickly sown, 

Several guides were chosen then, 

By destin'd lots, to lead our men ; 

And they whom Fortune here withstands 

Must prove their fates in our lands. 

On these two captains fell the lot ; 

But that which must not be forgot, 

Was Roxena's cunning grief ; 

Who from her father, like a thief, 

Hid her best and truest tears, 

Which her lustful lover wears 

In many a stoln and wary kiss, 

Unseen of father. Maids do this, 

Yet highly scorn to be called strumpets too : 

But what they lack oft, I'll be judg'd by you." 

There are several circumstances which indicate 
that Macbeth as a whole was not as successful a stage- 
play at first as one might imagine. But there is every 
reason to believe that the supernatural element made 

1 From The Mayor of Queensborough, I. I. 



i 4 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

an immediate hit. One reason for this, as Mr. Verity- 
says, 1 is that it gave opportunity for the introduction 
of music. From the start, therefore, there was a ten- 
dency to impart an operatic character to the play. 
Incidental music has always been an important factor in 
its presentation. 2 This is seen in the interpolation of 
the songs, "Come away, come away," and "Black 
Spirits." And it is more than likely that it is to be 
seen also in these lyrical or recitative passages of Hecate 
and the First Witch. Middleton wrote for the King's 
Players (Shakespeare's old company) from 1615 to 1624. 
Plays were constantly being worked over by new hands 
for fresh presentation. It surely does not take a bold 
flight of fancy to imagine that the manager and actors 
desired some alteration in Macbeth to please the ground- 
lings, and called upon Middleton to tinker with the 
work of the master-dramatist; and that Middleton 
thereupon introduced two songs and the character of 
Hecate 3 from The Witch, which he had written under 
the influence of Macbeth. And one is surely doing a 
service to the text of Shakespeare if one can create a 
presumption against the genuineness of these inferior 
lines. 

Variations in the several plays in the ratio between 
the number of lines of blank verse and the number of 

1 Pitt Press Edition, p. xxxix. 

2 See Davenant's version (Furness's Variorum, p. 303), Pepys' interesting 
comment on the " divertisement " in Macbeth, {Diary, Jan. 7, 1666-7), and 
Fleay, Life and Work of Shakespeare, p. 239. There was much music in the 
performance of Henry Irving. 

3 It must be admitted that modern criticism has pointed out that the char- 
acter of Hecate in the two plays is not the same. The Hecate of Macbeth is 
the Queen of Hell ; the Hecate of The Witch is a mere common hag. But 
this is a subtlety of distinction which would not have disturbed Middleton in 
making his additions, especially if he was trying to write up to Shakespeare's 
level. 



RIME 15 

lines of rimed pentameter furnished data for the first 
metrical test to be applied to Shakespeare. In 1778 
Malone wrote : " It is not * * * merely the use of rimes, 
* * * but their frequency, that is here urged, as a circum- 
stance which seems to characterize and distinguish our 
poet's earliest performances. * * * [Shakespeare's] 
neglect of riming seems to have been gradual. As, 
therefore, most of his early productions are character- 
ized by the multitude of similar terminations which they 
exhibit, whenever of two early pieces it is doubtful 
which preceded the other, I am disposed to believe, 
(other proofs being wanting,) that play in which the 
greater number of rimes is found, to have been the first 
composed." 1 A reference to the Table will show how 
Shakespeare's usage changed in this regard. In the 
early comedies the amount of rime is very large: in 
Love s Labour s Lost it more than balances the blank 
verse ; in The Comedy of Errors there is about one rime 
line to every five of blank verse. By the time of the 
Romances, rime has all but disappeared: with the ex- 
ception of the speech of Time the Chorus in Whiter s 
Tale, IV. 1, there is not a pentameter couplet in the 
play ; and in The Tempest, with the exception of the 
masque, there occurs but one tag, II. 1.326, 327. 

There can be little doubt that, from the time when 
Tamberlaine (1587) first caught the popular ear with 
" the spacious volubility of a drumming decasyllabon " 
until 1640, there was "a gradual disuse of rime by every 
author " and " a growing dislike on the part of the pub- 
lic to the mixture of rime and blank verse in stage 
plays." 2 But it is quite another thing to say that the 
number of rimes in a drama will determine its exact 

1 Quoted in T. N. S. S. 1874, p. iv d. 

1 Fleay in Ingleby, p. 64. But see Nicholson in T. N. S. S., 1874, p. 36. 



1 6 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

position in the order of composition. The venerability 
of this test seems to have given it undue importance in 
the eyes of certain critics. Mr. Fleay thinks that it is 
the only one which "is of use per se for determining the 
chronological arrangement of Shakespeare's works," 1 
but Mr. Fleay, though an indefatigable investigator, is 
seldom a reliable critic. The rime-test will indeed in- 
dicate the extreme groups, but the most casual glance 
at the Table at the end of the essay shows that it will 
not decide the order of the intermediate plays. (Is one 
to suppose, for instance, that Tzvelfth Night was written 
before Richard III}) The reason for this fallibility may 
be easily demonstrated. 

The operation of all the verse-tests is restricted by 
certain rules which are based on common sense. If 
these tests ever come in conflict with external evidence 
as to date or with the best sort of aesthetic criticism 
(perhaps they never do ; but grant the supposition), 
then the verse-tests must give way. Again, one test 
alone is not to be taken as determinative, but all are to 
be compared and their relative values weighed. Thirdly, 
the importance of a test is in inverse ratio to the delib- 
erateness with which the author uses the particular 
metrical peculiarity. 2 Those phenomena are least note- 
worthy which spring from a direct purpose, because 
this purpose may be assumed by the author for special 
reasons at any stage of his career. Those phenomena 
are most serviceable which follow a general subconsci- 
ous change of taste and habit, because such a change is 
least arbitrary and most irrevocable. If this last law 
be applied to the rime-test, it is evident that its conclu- 
sions are of little worth except in setting apart the plays 

1 See T. N. S. S., 1874, p. 7 ; Ingleby, pp. 63, 66. 67. 

2 See Spedding in T. N. S. S., 1874, pp. 28-29, Nicholson in same, p. 37. 



RIME 17 

which belong in the very first division. A poet may 
unconsciously put down an Alexandrine or a weak end- 
ing or run on one line into the next; 1 these are matters, 
not of choice and purpose, but of general artistic ten- 
dency. But no man rimes unconsciously — except by 
accident 2 at very rare intervals, or when he does not 
understand the nature of rime. 3 Thought is required 
of most men who would write in rime, and if a play- 
wright uses rime he has an end to be gained thereby. 
Down to his latest plays Shakespeare, at odd intervals, 
deliberately employed rime for certain definite effects. 
The presence or absence of such a deliberate intention 
must always be taken into account in the application 
of the rime-test. 

Thus it would not be right to place A Midsummer- 
Night's Dream before The Comedy of Errors, simply be- 
cause it contains a larger proportion of riming lines, 
until it had been first decided whether special incentives 
to rime did not exist in the case of the comedy of Fairy- 
land ; and the existence of such a long riming sequence 
as that put into Titania's mouth (III. 1. 168-177) proves 
that rime here is treated with the design of producing 
special effects. 4 If, therefore, it is found that the pro- 
portion of riming lines in Macbeth is far and away above 
that in every play which is generally supposed to be- 
long to the same period of authorship, it would not be 
right to assign it to an earlier date 5 until it has been 

1 See Dowden, Primer, p. 44. 

2 Macbeth, II. 3. 59-60, is, I think, an accidental rime. Cf. III. 4.99-100. 
s Cf. the rimes in the Aeneid. 

* See Dowden, Primer, p. 44 ; also Nicholson, T. N. S. S., 1804, p. 37, 
who adds a remark about the plays written at the time of the poems ; also 
Konig, p. 135, who thinks this the least important of the tests because the 
emotional pitch and the occasion must always be reckoned with. 

5 As Fleay did. See Manual, p. 136. 



1 8 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

considered whether there are not special reasons for the 
extraordinary number of heroic couplets. 

The number is really extraordinary. There are 
1 08 lines of rimed pentameter in Macbeth, while Hamlet 
(twice as long) has only two-thirds as many, and Antony 
and Cleopatra (twice as long) has but one-third. In 
order, however, to appreciate the peculiar nature of the 
difficulty, it is necessary first to examine the several 
uses to which Shakespeare regularly puts the rimed 
heroic. 

The couplet, then, is called upon 1 — 

(1) To mark an exit, that the actor may not go 
feebly off, and that he may give an easily remembered 
cue to his successor. An instance of this is the familiar 

Lay on, Macduff ; 
And damn'd be him that first cries, ' Hold, enough.' (V. 8.33 f.) 

Cf. V. 7.12 f. Similarly, it indicates the disappear- 
ance of a supernatural being — which amounts to an 
exit on the stage. See IV. 1. 7 1 f., 79 f. (also prophesies). 

(2) To round off a speech of some length with a 
high-flown sentiment or an epigrammatic snap; e. g., 
Duncan ends his welcome to Macbeth with the words: 

Only I have left to say, 
More is thy due, than more than all can pay. (I. 4.20 f.) 

Cf. I. 570 f.; V. 3.9 f. 

(3) In maxims, proverbs, old saws, and epigrams ; — 
so Lady Macbeth's 

Nought's had, all's spent 
Where our desire is got without content. (III. 2.4 ff.) 

Cf. I. 3.146 f. (also an aside); IV. 3.209!. ; V. 8. 5 if. 

(4) In asides, " which otherwise the audience might 
have great difficulty in knowing to be asides." 2 See 

1 See Heuser in Jakrbuck, XXVIII, p. 258. 

2 Abbott, Grammar, § 515. 



RIME 1 9 

I. 3.146 f. (also a proverb); I. 4.48-53 ;* V. 3.61 f. (also 
a tag). 

(5) In the prophecies of supernatural beings. See 
IV. 1.90-93; cf. IV. 1.71 f., 79 f. Perhaps also V. 

3-59 f- 

(6) In moments of passionate agitation. See III. 
4.135-140, 2 IV. 1. 94-101. 3 

The purposes for which these couplets are used 
are by no means extraordinary, and parallel instances 
throughout could be given from other plays. The num- 
ber of the couplets is extraordinary ; the three long 
rhyming passages — I. 4.48-53; III. 4.135-140; IV. 
1. 94-101 — are especially remarkable, and I am strongly 
inclined to agree with Professor Manly 4 that the last 
at least contains several spurious lines. 

But the most striking peculiarity of the pentameter 
rimes in this play is the unusually large number of 
couplets at the end of scenes and acts. 5 Mr. Fleay 
says, 6 " In this play more scenes end with tags than in 
any other play in Shakespeare; the number of tag- 
rhymes is also greater than in any other play, includ- 
ing his very earliest." Mr. Fleay counts, in the twenty- 
eight scenes of Macbeth, twenty-one scenes ending with 
tags, and thirty-three rimes in all. My own reckoning, 

1 Fleay suspected this passage {Manual, p. 251). 

2 Apparently doubted by Fleay {Manual, p. 256). 

3 This, with the tags, disposes of all the pentameter rimes in Macbeth, 
except III. 5.2 f., where the couplet at the beginning of Hecate's speech 
counterbalances the one at the end ; and II. 3.59 f., where the rime is probably 
accidental. IV. 1.69 rimes with a line of four-stresses, the First Witch break- 
ing in upon Macbeth. 

4 P- 153. 

5 Abbott ($ 515) thinks this kind of couplet helped the audience to under- 
stand that the scene was finished, when the scenery was not changed, or the 
arrangements were so defective that the change was not easily perceptible. 

6 Manual, p. 261. 



2o THE METRE OF MACBETH 

based on a more rigorous distinction between tag-rimes 
and rimes used for the other purposes, gives nineteen 
scenes with the end-tag, and twenty-eight rimes; 1 but, 
though the figures are slightly reduced, the conclusions 
remain practically unimpaired. Compare the three 
Shakespearean plays which have as many scenes as 
Macbeth, or more. 3 Henry F/has twenty-eight scenes, 
ten with tags, fourteen rimes; Antony and Cleopatra 
has forty-two scenes, four with tags, six rimes ; Corio- 
lanus has twenty-nine scenes, two with tags, four rimes. 
Fifteen is the largest number of scenes which end with 
tags in any other play of Shakespeare's, and the play 
which has fifteen is the ever-puzzling Troilus and Cres- 
sida. 

The precise nature of the singular rime problem in 
Macbeth now becomes evident and demands solution. 
Spedding suggested as a general explanation 2 that the 
actors were unwilling to have a scene end without a 
colophon; but this merely drives one back to the fur- 
ther question, why the actors developed such an acute 
aversion for going feebly off in 1606 — a question, of 
course, beyond the possibility of answer. A more self- 
sufficient theory is offered by the Clarendon Press 
Editors 3 and Mr. Fleay; 4 viz., that many of the tags 

1 I. 2.64-67; I. 5.72 f. ; I. 7.81 f. ; II. 1.60 f., 63 f. ; II. 3. 151 f, ; II. 
4.37 f., 40 f. ; III. 1. 141 f. ; III. 2.52-55 ; III. 4.142 f. ; III. 5-34 f- ; IV. 
1. 153 f. ; IV. 3.239 f. ; V. 1.85 f. ; V. 2.29 f . ; V. 3.59-62 ; V. 4.17-20 ; 
V. 5.47-52 ; V. 6.7-10 ; V. 8.72-75. Note the extraordinary number in the 
last act. 

2 T. N. S. S. 1874, P- 29. 

3 Messrs. Clark and Wright, Preface, pp. ix-xii. They suspect I. 2.64-67 ; 
II. 1.60 f.; V. 2.29 f.; V. 5.47-50 ; V. 8.72-75. [16 lines]. 

* Manual, pp. 251 ff. He adds to the Clarendon Press list I. 4.48-53 
(technically not a scene-tag) ; II. 3. 151 f.; II. 4.37 f., 40 f.; IV. 1.153 f-J V. 
3.61 f. ; V. 4.17-20; V. 6.9 f. [22 lines]. Fleay afterwards retracted. See 
his Introduction to Shakespearean Study, p. 36. 



RIME 21 

were written, not by Shakespeare, but by another, pre- 
sumably Middleton. They are certainly bald and weak 
enough, and their salient characteristics — unequal 
rhythms, faulty rimes, violent cacophany, crowding of 
consonants, and withal a certain " catchiness" — are 
Middletonian symptoms. Compare the following: 
In Macbeth: — 

(i) Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death, 
And with his former tide greet Macbeth. 
I'll see it done. 
What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won. (I. 2.64-67). 

(2) Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives : 

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. (II. 1.60, 61). 

(3) And still keep eyes upon her. So good night : 

My mind she hath mated and amazed my sight. (V. 1.85, 86). 

(4) Each drop of us. Or so much as it needs 

To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds. (V. 2.29, 30). 

(5) That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace 
We will perform in measure, time and place : 
So thanks to all at once and to each one, 

Whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scone. (V. 8.72-75). 

In Middleton : 

(1) " Come let's away : 

Of all the year this is the sportful'st day. 

{The Roaring Girl, II. 1.430 f.) 

(2) Tarry and dine here all. Brother, we've a jest, 
As good as yours, to furnish out a feast. 

We'll crown our table with't — Wife, brag no more 
Of holding out : who most brags is most whore." 

{lb., IV. 2.345 ff.) 

(3) I'll take some witch's counsel for his end, 

That will be sur'st : mischief is mischief's friend." 

{The Witch, IV. 1.95 f.) 

(4) " Flatters recovery now, the thing's so gross : 

His disgrace grieves me more than a life's loss." {lb., V. 1 .1 35 f.) 

(5) " The worst can be but death, and let it come ; 
He that lives joyous, every day's his doom." 

{Women Beware Women I. 2.232 f.) 



22 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

The theory of the Middletonian authorship of the 
tags may be thus elaborated : The extreme brevity of 
Macbeth and the garbled state of the text of some of its 
scenes (notably I. 2) suggest that the play, as we have 
it, is a stage version reduced from the original draft. 
Among other alterations the revising playwright may 
have cut out extended passages towards the ends of 
various scenes and substituted rimed complets in their 
place. 

This hypothesis gains some additional plausability 
from an examination of the peculiar formations of the 
scene-endings. Instead of a number of single tags, with 
a few scattering variations, such as we find in the other 
plays of Shakespeare, we have here almost every 
variety, every peculiarity. There are, in Macbeth, 
four single tags (in one of which is an Alexandrine), 
four double tags (in one of which there is an Alexan- 
drine and a short line), one triple tag, three single tags 
followed by short lines, two double tags followed by 
short lines, two single tags followed by full lines, one 
single tag followed by a full line and a short line, one 
double tag with a short line between the two couplets, 
one double tag with a full line intervening. 

It is, however, a precarious matter to lay one's 
finger on a line and say, "This cannot be Shake- 
speare's," and I would not press too closely the theory 
of the Middletonian tags. But whatever be the correct 
explanation — whether Spedding is right, or Fleay is 
right, or Wright is right, or all of them are wrong and 
the true interpreter has not yet appeared — the reader 
can hardly help feeling that some special and unusual 
influence occurred to cause this freak in Macbeth, and 
that the extraordinary number of rimed lines does not 



BLANK VERSE 23 

indicate for it an earlier authorship than that generally 
assigned. 1 

The pretty arrangements of rime-lines — interwoven 
quatrains, sonnets, etc. — so common in the early plays, 
have all disappeared long before Macbeth? I should 
prefer to consider I.3.7 (' ' Her husband's to Aleppo gone, 
master o' the Tiger") as a single doggerel line, if such 
a thing may be, rather than to force it into a blank- 
verse scansion. 3 For doggerel in tragedy, cf. Lear, 
I. 5-55 f- 

III. 
BLANK VERSE. 

When Milton wrote in his preface to Paradise 
Lost of " true musical delight, which consists only in 
apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense var- 
iously drawn out from one verse into another," he ex- 
pressed an empirical truth about the harmony of blank 
verse, which it had taken more than a century to dem- 
onstrate. It was not a self-evident truth to Lord 
Surrey, who introduced the metre about 1540: — 

" There stands in sight an isle, hight Tenedon, 
Rich, and of fame, while Priam's kingdom stood, 
Now but a bay, and road, unsure for ship. 
Hither them secretly the Greeks withdrew, 
Shrouding themselves under the desert shore. 
And, weening we they had been fled and gone, 
And with that wind had fet the land of Greece, 
Troy discharged her long continued dole." 4 

1 A simple explanation might be developed along this line : — almost half of 
the tag-rimes occur in the last act ; in this act there is a crowding of action, of 
army scenes and lively incidents ; the rimes bear out the martial strain and 
help to impart an impressive fulness to the actors' tones. 

* See Fleay in Ingleby, pp. 52, 53. 

s Mr. E. K. Chambers tries to do this (Arden Edition, p. 176). 

* Surrey's translation of the Aeneid, II. 29 ff. 



24 THE ME TEE OF MA CBE TH 

It was not a self-evident truth to Norton and Sack- 
ville, or to Thomas Kyd, or even to Christopher Mar- 
lowe. Between the woodenness of Surrey's Aeneid and 
the extreme flexibility of Macbeth or The Duchess of Malji 
is a whole world of change. As far as this general 
development concerns Shakespeare — and indeed he is 
the central figure in the movement — one may perhaps 
summarize it as follows: 1 Starting under a metrical 
bondage but little less troublesome than that of riming, 
he perfected himself first within the limits of the indi- 
vidual line, until he reached at last the utmost freedom 
possible within those limits; then he set himself to re- 
move the limits, broke down the barrier at the end of 
the line, and proceeded to compose less and less with 
the single verse as a standard, and more and more in 
rhythmical phrases of ever-varying length ; in Cymbeline, 
The Winter s Tale and The Tempest long familiarity leads 
him at times to abuse his liberty, and to write measured 
prose for verse. To put in it still broader terms, 
Shakespeare's development is a progress " in the proper 
adaptation of words and rhythms to the sense contained 
in them," 2 a progress from a "declamatory" to a 
" spontaneous " verse-form. 3 

A. Stress. 

Stress Modification of the Five-Foot Line. A blank- 
verse line is commonly defined as an unrimed line of 
five feet, each foot containing two syllables, and every 
second syllable receiving a stress or accent. 

I have | thee n6t | and ydt | I sde | thee stfll. 4 (II. 1.35.) 

1 See Corson, p. 61 ; Manly, pp. xxxiii, xxxiv. 

2 See Symonds, p. 50. 
8 Corson, p. 61. 

4 Such regular lines are most common where, as here, there is an anti- 
thesis. (Abbott, § 453 a.) 



STRESS 25 

But this definition, like many of the definitions of 
our English prosody, is to be taken somewhat as a con- 
ventionalized norm, more honoured in the breach than 
in the observance. In the classical prosody there is a 
definite and unmistakable distinction between a long 
and a short syllable. In the English, based as it is upon 
an accentual and not a' quantitative principle, there are 
many shades of gradation between an unstressed and a 
full-stressed syllable. 1 There is no small difference be- 
tween the accent on as and the accent on feeling in the 
following line, and yet both count as "stress" : 

To feel I ing as | to sight | or art | thou but (II. 1.37.) 

The modification of the norm-line by weak or inter- 
mediate stresses constitutes, therefore, one of the eas- 
iest and most frequent safeguards against monotony in 
blank-verse. A large majority of lines (in Macbeth 
probably 75 per cent.) have less than the whole number 
of five emphatic accents. 2 Out of the thirty-one lines 
in Macbeth's famous soliloquy (II. 1.33-64 omitting 41), 
to my ear only nine have five full stresses, while sixteen 
have four stresses, and six have but three stresses. 
Such results cannot be definitive, since different readers 
(and the same reader at different times) will emphasize 
differently. Nevertheless they show how preposterous 
is the vulgar notion that blank verse is designed to tally 

1 Mr. A. J. Ellis distinguished nine grades of force or stress : subweak, 
weak, superweak, submean, mean, supermean, substrong, strong and super- 
strong. {Transactions of the Philological Society, June 1876). 

2 Cf. Abbott (§ 453 a) "I should say that rather less than one of three 
has the full number of five emphatic accents. About two out of three have 
four, and one out of fifteen has three." Alden is more conservative (p. 55) : 
" It would be safe to say that in English five-stress iambic verse, read with 
only the ordinary etymological and rhetorical accents twenty-five per cent, of 
the verses lack the full five stresses characteristic of the type." 



26 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

the number of fingers on the hand. A very few lines 
have indeed but two strong stresses; 1 e. g., 
This supernatural soliciting. (I. 3.130.) 
On the other hand, there are lines with more than 
the five primary accents, one foot bearing two. In some 
such cases we have a "hovering accent," 2 where the 
regular word-accent and the peculiar verse-accent divide 
the stress between them: the accent "hovers" over 
two syllables; e. g., 

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies . 3 (V. 3.38). 
The result is a close analogy to the classic spondee. 
In other cases, besides the five primary accents, a sec- 
ondary accent may be found in one foot; e. g., 

Lead our | first bdt | tie ; wdr | thy Macduff | and we - (V. 6.4) ; 
or in two feet; e. g., 

To cry / | Hold, hdld! | Great Gla | mis wdr | thy Cd.wdor 4 (I. 5.55) ; 

or even in three feet, to offset the two-stressed line ; e.g., 

WMt hath I quench'd thdm | hath given | me fire. | Hark! Pdace. 
(II. 2.2). 

If the generalizations of Conrad may be accepted, 
despite the inadequate basis on which they rest, 5 there 
are more fully accentuated lines in the earliest and lat- 
est dramas than in the central plays of Shakespeare's 
career, more in The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth than 
in The Merchant of Venice and Henry V. He gives a 

1 Tennyson to the contrary. See the Memoir by his son, vol. II., p. 14 : 
" In a blank verse you can have from three up to eight beats." Mr. E. K. 
Chambers shares this opinion. (Arden Edition, p. 174). But see Conrad in 
Jahrbuch XXXI, p. 331. 

* See Gummere, Handbook of Poetics, p. 142. 

3 For other examples of hovering accent, see II. 3.150; IV. 3.28; IV. 
3.196 ; V. 2.18 ; V. 3.27. 

4 For other examples of seven-stress lines, see II. 2.1,39. 

5 Set. Jahrbuch XXXI, p. 332. He deals with but four plays, and with only 
a thousand lines in each. 



STRESS 



27 



plausible explanation of this interesting circumstance by 
saying that in Errors the poet was endeavoring, after 
the poetic fashion of the day, to make his lines as regu- 
lar as possible (therefore, with five accents); in the 
middle periods his allegiance to the law of regularity 
was shaken ; and in Macbeth and the later plays the 
heavily stressed line returned with the increased fulness 
of expression and consequent weight of the rhythm. 1 

CONRAD'S TABLE OF STRESSES. 2 



Play 



Lines with 


3 or 4 


5, 


6, or 7 


2 stresses 


stresses 


stresses 


6 


752 




202 


29 


819 




156 


32 


814 




153 


25 


734 




236 



Comedy of Errors . 
Merchant of Venice 

Henry V 

Macbeth 



Stress Modification by Change in Length of Line. 
Variations in stress are produced also by the addition of 
a whole foot to the line (resulting in an hexameter or 
Alexandrine 3 ), or by the subtraction of one or more feet 
(resulting in a " short line "). 

When Alexandrines occur, the time-element has 
generally been obscured by the division of the line be- 
tween different persons; 4 e. g., 

Mac. Shall be | the maws | of kites | 

Lady M. What, quite | unmann'd | in folly? (III. 4.73.) 

1 For various rules about the use of stress, see Arden Edition, p. 174, and 
Abbott, \ 453a. They deserve little attention. 

J Based on a thousand lines in each play. 

s Alexandrine is the regular term of art ; but, properly speaking, an Alex- 
andrine (as used in French) is a twelve-syllable line with the pause after the 
sixth syllable. Not all of the sixth-stress lines in Shakespeare have the pause 
so placed ; in some respects, therefore, hexameter is the better word. 

4 Abbott, ($500) and perhaps Ellis (in Mayor p. 170) would read such a 
passage as two short lines rather than one long line, and call it a " trimeter 
couplet." 



28 THE METRE OE MACBETH 

Mr. E. K. Chambers ! thinks that the extra foot is 
possibly to be explained " by the second speaker break- 
ing in on the first, so that one or two syllables are pro- 
nounced simultaneously." But it is not likely that a 
dramatic poet could hear the two sounds simultaneously 
while composing. Once in a while the Alexandrine is 
parceled among three speeches; e. g., 
Lady M. For a | few words. | 
Serv. Madam, 2 | I will. | 

Lady M. Nought's had, | all's spent, etc. (III. 2.4.) 

On the infrequent occasions when an Alexandrine 
occurs in the course of a single speech, there is gener- 
ally such a break in the middle of the line as to make 
practically two speeches instead of one. 3 Thus: 
Mac. Give to the edge o' the sword 

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls 

That trace | him in | his line. || No boas | ting like | a fool. 

(IV. 1. 153.) 
Or thus : 

Macd. I am not treacherous. 
Mai, But Macbeth is. 

A good and virtuous nature may recoil 

In an | imper | ial charge. || But I | shall crave | your pardon. 

(IV. 3.20.) 
When the sense of rhythm is not disturbed in one 

of these ways, Alexandrines are comparatively rare. 
As a rule investigators of metre have shown themselves 
inconsistent and perplexing in their handling of this 
irregularity. 4 Some, like Abbott, would put every 

1 Arden Edition, p. 174. 

2 The extra foot is often a title of address, like madam or sirrah, or my 
liege, or my lord. It is hard to tell whether one should not count the title as 
altogether extra-metrical. 

3 See Arden Edition, p. 174. 

4 Thus Ellis's inconsistency is pointed out by Wagner in Anglia XIII., 
p. 356. Many of the examples which Mayor gives (pp. 161, 162) are open to 
a similar charge. As for Fleay, out of the fifty-six cases he counts in Winter's 
Tale (Ingleby, p. 90) I can agree to only seventeen. 



STRESS 29 

apparent Alexandrine into the Procrustean bed and short- 
en it by drastic measures. This is to rob Shakespeare of 
one of the means by which he imparted variety. Others 
greatly exaggerate the number of instances, because 
they fail to consider trisyllabic feet and feminine sylla- 
bles. I find at most twenty-five Alexandrines in Mac- 
beth; viz., I. 2.37 [Here the text is probably corrupt] 1 ; 
I. 2.58, 64; I. 3. in; II. 3.58, 88; III. 1.45,46 [which 
I believe should be considered one line]; III. 1.139; 

III. 2.4, 16; III. 3. 11; III. 4.73; HI.6.14,30,39,49; 

IV. 2.30; IV. 3.8, 20, 97; V. 3.5, 37; V. 5.16, 17 
[which I believe should be considered one line]. 2 

As to Shakespeare's general usage, it is probably 
safe to accept Fleay's conclusions, cum grano salts. 3 
Until Twelfth Night, the dramatist seems to have con- 
tented himself with a dozen or half-dozen Alexandrines 
in each play ; with Measure for Measure the number 
takes a sudden leap, (revealing in this case, as in so 
many others, the poet's growing impatience of metri- 
cal rules), and the frequency of Alexandrines becomes 
a rough test for plays of the Third and Fourth Periods. 

TABLE OF ALEXANDRINES. 4 

Love's Labour's Lost 4 

Comedy of Errors 8 

Merchant of Venice 12 

Henry V 12 

Hamlet 43 

Othello 66 

Lear 60 

Macbeth 2S 

Antony and Cleopatra 39 

Winter's Tale 56 

Tempest 15 

1 So they, I think, belongs to the next line, from which Doubly should be 
omitted. 

2 Compare Fleay's list in Ingleby, p. 85. 

3 See Ingleby, pp. 83, 88. 

4 This Table is made from Fleay's lists in Ingleby, pp. 71-92. It does not 
agree in a single total with his first count {Manual, p. 135). 



3o THE METRE OF MACBETH 

Short Lines, of one, two, three, or four measures, 
are much more frequent than Alexandrines, and more 
organically connected with the verse-structure, as de- 
finite reasons for their use can frequently be detected. 1 

(i) The defect in the line is sometimes to be pieced 
out by a gesture or a bit of action ; e.g., 

As this which now I draw. [Drawing his dagger]. (II. 1.41). 
This is a sorry sight. [Looking on his hands']. (II. 2.21). 

Cf. I. 2.41; III. 3.18; III. 4.4. 

(2) Sometimes the compensating pause is to be ac- 
counted for by a change in the person addressed. 
Macbeth says to his Lady in the banquet scene, " What 
man dare, I dare," and then, turning to the ghost of 
Banquo, "Approach thou like the rugged Russian 
bear." (III. 4.99). Cf. I. 3.126; I. 4.14; I. 7.28. 

(3) Or by a change in thought. Banquo answers 
Macbeth's question, " Went it not so? " with " To the 
selfsame tune and words," and then, seeing the ap- 
proach of Ross, inquires " Who's here? " (I. 3.88). Cf. 
I. 6.6; 2 II. 4.29; III. 2.51; IV. 3.28, 44. 

(4) The unexpected gap may attract the attention, 
and so throw back upon the words of the short line an 
unusual emphasis. Thus, when Macbeth says that 
Duncan purposes to go away the next morning, Lady 
Macbeth replies with fearful energy, 

O, never 
Shall sun that morrow see. (I. 5.62). 

Cf. III. 4.20, 51; IV. 3.219; V. 5.28 [which falls 
also under (8)]; V. 8.16. 

(5) Accordingly, the short line is often used instead 
of a tag-rime or even after a tag, to give an impressive 

1 See Jahrbuch XXXI, pp. 335, 336 ; Mayor, p. 148 ; Arden Edition, p. 
174. 

J The text is probably corrupt here, and a word has dropped out. 



STRESS 31 

ending to a scene; e. g., I. 4 ends with the words of 
Duncan, full of dramatic irony, "It is a peerless kins- 
man." Cf. I. 3.156; IV. 2.85 [these three without tag] ; 

I. 5.74, III. 2.56, III. 4.144, V. 2.31, V. 4.21 [these five 
after tag]; IV. 1.156 [after tag and an unrimed line]. 

(6) Or to render the exit of a character effective ; 
e. g., the second apparition (IV. 1.81) says 

For none of woman born 
Shall harm Macbeth. [Descends.'] 

Cf. II. 1.30; II. 3-57; V. 7.23. 

(7) Short lines are frequent at the end of a speech, 
where a well-defined rhythm-group comes to an end. 
See I. 3.61, 85, 103; I. 4.43; II. 2.30; l II. 2.72; II. 
3.25,54,111; III. 1.13,18; m.4.6,68; IV. 2.26, 35, 
43; IV. 3.17,90, 215; V. 3.46. They appear occa- 
sionally also at the beginning of a speech, as II. 3.86; 

II. 4.33; III. 2.13; V. 8.23; and in broken dialogue, 
as I. 2.7; III. 2.26. 

(8) In some cases of this sort the termination of the 
rhythm-group and the neglect to complete the line are 
occasioned by the entrance of a character; e. g., II. 
2.63; II. 3.68, 95, 101; III. 4.8; IV. 1.76; IV. 2.64; 
IV. 3.139; V. 7.4. 

(9) The short line crops out, furthermore, in mo- 
ments of intense emotion, when language is naturally 
brief, broken, and explosive. The irregular lines in the 
excited narrative of the battle, unless the text is cor- 
rupt, are perhaps to be explained by the breathless 
haste of the narrators. See I. 2.19 [I prefer to take, 
with the Folio, " Like valour's minion " as the short 
line]; 1. 2.51. Cf. II. 3.83, 109; IV. 3.217. 

1 I prefer to take " When they did say ' God bless us ! ' " and " Consider it 
not so deeply" as two short lines, rather than as an Alexandrine with femi- 
nine syllables before the caesura and at the end. 



32 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

(10) Speaking generally, the short lines denote 
abruptness and lack of continuity, and so are common in 
questions and answers, exclamations, apostrophes, proper 
names, summonses, commands, etc. Cf. I. 2.66; II. 1.1, 
10, 11; II. 2.18, 19, 30; II. 3.75; II. 4.39; III. 1.24, 
29,40; III. 2.1; III. 3.15; III. 4.13, 15,47; IV. 1.77, 
78, 143; IV, 2.80; V. 3.12, 18,34; V. 5.30. 1 

My count of the short lines in Macbeth is as follows. 
(It should be compared with Fleay's figures as given in 
the Table below). Total number 104. 

(1) One Stress; nine instances: I. 3.103; II. 1.10, 
11 ; II. 2.18, 19; III. 1.40; III. 3.15 ; III. 4.47; V. 3.29. 

(2) Two Stresses; thirty instances : 1.2.19,41, 51, 
66; I. 4.14; I. 6.31; II. 1.1; II. 3.54, 68, 86, 109, 
131 2 ; 11.4.33,39; HI. 1. 18, 24, 29; III. 4.13, 15, 20; 
IV. 1. 143; IV. 2.26, 80, 85; IV. 3.219; V. 3.34; V. 
5.30; V. 7.23; V. 8.16, 23. 

(3) Three Stresses; fifty-five instances: I. 3.61, 
85, 126, 156; I. 4.43, 58; I. 5.62, 74; II. 1.30, 41; II. 
2.21, 30 (2), 63, 72; II. 3.57, 75, 95, 101, in ; III. 1. 13; 
III. 2.1, 13, 26, 32, 51, 56; III. 3.18, 21; III. 4.4, 6, 8, 
51, 68, 144; IV. 1.76, 77, 78, 81, 156; IV. 2.35, 43, 
64; IV. 3.17, 28, 90, 139, 215; V. 2.31; V. 3.12, 18, 
46; V. 4.21; V. 5.28; V. 7.4. 

(4) Four stresses; ten instances: I. 2.7; 1. 3.88; 
I. 6.6; I.7.28; II. 1. 19; II. 3.83; II. 4.29; IV. 3.44, 
217; V. 8.59. 

Shakespeare developed a sudden fondness for these 
irregular lines at the same time that he began to use the 
Alexandrine extensively, viz. , at the opening of his 

1 The so-called Amphibious Section (See Abbott, § 513, and Mayor, p. 146) 
is to me an Amphibious Fiction. No poet would think of composing in the 
way it suggests. (See Ellis in Mayor, p. 166). 

2 I prefer to take " Look to the Lady " as the 'short line in this passage 
rather than " Let's away." " Nor . . . motion " seems to me certainly a line- 



SUBSTITUTION 



33 



Third Period. 1 Alexandrines and short lines are but 
particular applications of the general remark, that 
Shakespeare came to compose in rhythmical periods 
rather than in single lines. " If this be true, it may be 
expected that he will often end one well-defined rhythm- 
phrase with any of the legitimate endings, and begin the 
next without reference to the way in which that will 
affect at the junction the carrying through of a system 
of scansion" 2 based on the individual line ; hence the 
long line and the short line. 

TABLE OF SHORT LINES. 3 



Play. 



Per Cent, of 

Unriraed 
Verse Lines. 


Total 

Number. 


1 foot. 


2 feet. 


3 feet. 


3-6 


23 


O 


12 


II 


1.4 


17 


2 


II 


4 


2.4 


46 


7 


16 


20 


1.6 


31 


4 


12 


11 


6.3 


158 


25 


53 


66 


6.7 


171 


25 


67 


69 


8.4 


I 9 I 


15 


37 


120 


5-7 


97 


4 


29 


5i 


5-2 


143 


11 


35 


71 


2-9 


5S 


4 


14 


26 


4.8 


70 


3 


20 


42 



4 feet. 



Love's Labour's Lost . 
Comedy of Errors . . 
Merchant of Venice . . 

Henry V 

Hamlet 

Othello 

Lear 

Macbeth 

Antony and Cleopatra . 
Winter's Tale .... 
Tempest 



4 
M 
10 

19 
13 
26 

14 

5 



B. Substitution. 

Those lines are now to be considered in which va- 
riety is secured by the substitution for the regular iambus 
of a trochee, or a monosyllabic foot, or a trisyllabic foot. 
A large number of feet are only apparently so ' 'irregular" 
— if indeed we should ever apply that Johnsonian word 
to our "iambic licentiate." Mistakes in scansion are 
apt to spring from a failure to realize that many words 

1 Compare forty-two in As You Like It and fifty-nine in Twelfth Night 
with 108 in Julius Caesar and 107 in Measure for Measure. 

2 Manly, p. xxxiv. 

3 This Table is based on Fleay's figures in Ingleby. The per cent, col- 
umn is my own. 



34 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

in Shakespeare's day were not accented as they are now 
and that many others had not yet been frozen into a 
constant pronunciation. Thus we always say persever- 
ance; Shakespeare always perseverance (see IV. 3.93). 
Again our practice is to say unfe'lt ; Shakespeare accents 
either unfe'lt {Richard III., 1. 4.80) or tinfelt {Macbeth, II. 
3.142). Cf. undone (I. 5.26), ?inrough{V. 2. 10), ilnsure (V. 
4.19). Other instances in Macbeth where Shakespeare's 
pronunciation differs from ours, or where Shakespeare's 
pronunciation is not consistent, are as follows : 

(1) I'nsane (I. 3.84). This is the only time the word 
occurs in Shakespeare. 

(2) Authdrized (III. 4.66) — probably; cf. Lover's 
Complaint, 104, Sonnets, xxxv. 6. 1 

(3) Purveyor (I. 6.22); only occurrence of the word. 

(4) Htcmane (III. 4.76). Both the modern words, 
humane and human, are always spelled humane in Shake- 
speare. Modern humane is with him always hilmane, 
except perhaps in Winter s Tale, III. 2.166. 

(5) Chastise (I. 5.28). But chastise in Troilus and 
Cressida, V. 5.4. 

(6) Hecate (III. 5.1, etc.); always dissyllabic in 
Shakespeare, except in 1 Henry VI., III. 2.64. 2 

(7) D tens inane {IV . 1.93); elsewhere Dunsinane {e. g., 
V. 4.9.) 

(8) Cdnfirmd (V. 8.41); so also in Much Ado, V. 
4.17; elsewhere confirmed. 

(9) Obscure (II. 3.64); but obscure in Venus and 
Adonis, 237. Schmidt frames the following rule: Dis- 
syllabic oxytonical adjectives and participles become 
paroxytonical before nouns accented on the first syl- 
lable. 3 

1 See Browne, p. 9. 

2 Which Shakespeare probably did not write. 

3 See Appendix I. to Schmidt's Lexicon, Vol. II., p. 1413. 



SUBSTITUTION 35 

Somewhat similiar cases are the endings, -ion, -ins, 
-ions 1 , and the like, the first vowel of which is now always 
slurred, and sometimes blended with the preceding 
consonant (nation being pronounced nashon), but to 
which Shakespeare often gave full two-syllable value, 
especially at the end of the line. Whether the termin- 
ation is to have one or two syllables must be deter- 
mined solely by the ear. Thus — 

Which smoked with bloody execution. (I. 2.18). 
But 

Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not (I. 4.1). 

It goes without saying that in Shakespeare as in 
modern English poetry the e of the past tense or past 
participle in -ed is sometimes sonant and sometimes 
mute. Shakespeare at the beginning of his career was 
more likely to sound it than at the end. 2 I find in Macbeth 
but one 3 instance where the e is sounded in the past 
tense {disbursed, I. 2.61), and ten instances where it is 
sounded in the participle {drenched, I. 7.68; cursed, II. 
1.8; heat-oppressed, II. 1.39; blessed, II. 3.97; trenched 
III. 4.27; acciirscd, IV. 1 . 134 ; constrained, V. 4.13; 
abhorred, V. 7.10; accursed, V. 8.17; cursed, V. 8.55). 

When an r comes next to a consonant an e sound 
may be inserted between the two letters (Compare the 
way Scotchmen pronounce world), and this e may be 
treated as part of a foot; e. g., 

1 Cf., also, sergeant (I. 2.3). 

2 The sounding of the -ed, also the -est of the second person, and the -eth of 
the third person present are made tests by Hertzberg {Jahrbuch XIII, p. 257) 
and by Schipper (II. i. p. 295), Their observations on the -ed are confirmed by 
Conrad {Jahrbuch XXXI, p. 34S). But the figures are few and the test is un- 
important. 

3 Verbs the infinitives of which end in d or / are of course not included in 
this count. 



36 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

Let your rememb[e]rance apply to Banquo. (III. 2.30) 
Not i' the wor[e]st rank of manhood say 't. (III. 1.103) 
So also ent[e]rance (I. 5.40), monst[e]rous (III. 6.8), 
child[e]ren (IV. 3.177). An anomalous instance, with 
p and an i sound, is cap\i\tains (I. 2.34), which was per- 
haps influenced by the French pronunciation. 

Similarly long vowels or diphthongs before r's in 
monosyllables, " since they naturally allow the voice to 
rest upon them, are often so emphasized as to dispense 
with an unaccented syllable. . . . Whether the word is 
dissyllabized, or merely requires a pause after it, can- 
not in all cases be determined 1 ." As a rule I am inclined 
to favour the latter alternative. 

What should be spoken here, where our fate. (II. 3.127) 
Cf fare 2 (IV. 3. 1 1 1), fire (IV. i.n), our (I. 6.30) 

On the other hand, the burr of the r may obscure 
or soften a neighbouring vowel sound, so that it is 
almost or quite inaudible, as — 

Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff. 3 (V. 3.44) 
The same is now and then true of other liquids {cf. 
persnal, I. 3.91). In the case of evils (IV. 3.57), devil 
(IV. 3.56, etc.), and devilish (IV. 3. 117), either the v 
drops out, as in Scotch " de'il " and the "dram of 
eale," 4 or the i is to be slurred. 5 Frequently, also, 
there are elisions in the connection of pronouns with the 
forms of <5^and have, though here again it is hard to say 
whether the syllable is actually dropped, or passed 
lightly over. See, e.g., I have (I. 4.20), we have (III. 



1 Abbott, §484. 

2 Perhaps in this case the compensating pause comes before the word. 

3 See the long list in Mayor (pp. 158 ff.). The spellings sprite and parlous 
show the justness of this slurring. 

4 Abbott, S466. 

5 Mayor, p. 159. 



SUBSTITUTION 37 

3.20), they have (II. 1.2 1), / am (III. 1.108), we are (III. 
1. 91), etc. 6W fo «//Y^ you (III. 1.44) is in fact, says 
Walker 1 , God V wi you ; sometimes a trisyllable, some- 
times contracted into a dissyllable ; — now good-bye. For 
the rest I am inclined to think that much of the elision 
and slurring over which Abbott, Mayor and other inves- 
tigators wax enthusiastic is imaginary, — a relic of Popean 
methods in metrical criticism. 

1 have not thought it worth while to make a count 
of the trochees and anapaests in Macbeth, because their 
number is so great and their character so variable that 
precision would be almost impossible, and because all 
the practical results of such a count have been already 
demonstrated sufficiently by Conrad (see Table, p. 39). 
Trochees occur most frequently at the beginning of the 
line, to which they often impart an incisiveness. They 
are common also after the caesura, in the third and four 
feet. In the second and fifth feet they are compara- 
tively rare, because two stresses coming together with- 
out a pause make the rhythm awkward. There are 
many cases where two trochees occur in the same 
line, and an occasional instance of three. Examples: — 

( 1 ) In the first foot : — 

Say to I the king | the know | ledge of | the broil. (I. 2.6) 

(2) In the second foot : — 

The eye | wink at j the hand; | yet let | that be. (I. 4.52) 

See, also, I. 3.59; I. 7.30; III. 1.97; IV. 2.71, etc. 

(3) In the third foot : — 

And his | great love, | sharp as | his spur, | hath holp him. 
(I. 6.23) 

See, also, I. 2.67; I. 3.42, 48, 49, 58, 107, 116; II. 
2.16, 59; II. 3. 118; II. 4.7; III. 2.41, etc., etc. 

1 p. 227. 



38 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

(4) In the fourth foot : — 

And fan | our peop | le cold. | Ndrway | himself. (I. 2.50) 
See, also, I. 3.82, 86, 93, 117, 136; II. 1.32; II. 4.13; 
III. 1.32; III. 3.8; III. 4.2, 54, 93, 109, etc., etc. 

(5) In the fifth foot : — 

You know I not how | to do | it. Well, | say, sir. (V. 5.32) 

See, also, IV. 2.4; V. 8.50, etc. 

(6) In the first and third feet : — 

Cdnnot I be ill ; | cannot [ be good : | if ill. (I. 3. 131) 

See, also, IV. 1.151; V. 3.49, etc. 

(7) In the first and fourth feet : — 

Ring the | alar | um-bell. | Murder | and treason. (II. 3.79) 
See, also, I. 4.25; II. 3.124, 149; III. 1.20 1 ; III. 4.49; 
III. 6.18, 29, 34, etc. 

(8) In the first and fifth feet : — 

Say, if I thou'dst ra | ther hear | it from | our mouths. (IV. 1.62) 

(9) In the third and fonrtJi feet : — 

No less J to have | ddne so : | le"t me | infold thee. (I. 4.31) 

(10) In the fourth and fifth feet : — 

Butin I itshares | some woe, | though the | main part. (IV. 3.198) 

See, also, IV. 3.18. 

(1 1) In the first, second, and third feet : — 

Ay', and | since too, | murders | have been | perform'd. (III. 4.77) 
See, also, V. 6.4. 

(12) In the second, fourth, and fifth feet : — 

What a haste | Idoks through | his eyes ! | S6 should | hd look. 
(1. 2.46). 

Trisyllabic feet, or anapaests, are not at all unusual, 
and are generally felt to add speed to the rhythm. 

In my | volup | tuousness : | your wives, | your daughters. (IV. 
3-6i) 

All con I tinent | impe | diments would | o'erbear. (IV. 3.64) 

1 Read as one line with 19. 



SUBSTITUTION 



39 



What a haste | looks through | his eyes ! | So should | he look. 
I. 2.46) 

That look | not like | the inha | bitants | o' the earth. (I. 3.41) 

Monosyllabic feet are comparatively rare, appear- 
ing only when the stress upon the single syllable is very 
heavy, or the quantity of the syllable is very long, or a 
pause makes up for the omission of the light syllable. 
" Initial truncation " (z. e. the dropping of the first light 
syllable of the line,) so common in other English iambic 
rhythms, is especially rare in Shakespearean blank verse. 
I think that I detect an instance of it in I. 2.45. 

Who I comes here ? | The wor | thy thane | of Ross. 1 

Other examples of monosyllabic feet are I. 2.5 
(fourth foot), I. 4.35 (fourth foot), I. 5.41 (fourth foot), 
I. 5.58 (fifth foot), II. 1.5 1 (third foot), III. 4. 133 (third 
foot), III. 6.14 (fourth foot), IV. 1.22 (third foot). 

As Shakespeare's verse grows freer and bolder, 
more in harmony with the thought and the emotion, it 
is only to be expected that these irregular feet should 
become more and more frequent with him. 

TABLE OF SUBSTITUTIONS. 2 



Play 


Trochees 


Anapaests 


Monosyllabic 
feet 


Total 




260 
215 
26l 
309 


I 
2 

4 
II 


2 

O 

I 

6 


263 
217 
266 
326 



Conrad's special Table of Trochees presents some 
interesting matter: — 



Play 


Total 


At Beginning 


After Caesura 


2 in a line 


3 in a line 


Comedy of Errors . 
Merchant of Venice 


260 
215 
261 
309 


185 
135 
164 
149 


32 

44 

61 

I02 


12 

15 
24 
29 


O 
O 


5 



1 So Verity (p. 271). Cf. Measure for Measure, V. 1.315, Richard II. 
I. 1.20. 

2 From Conrad's Tables, in Jahrbuch XXXI, pp. 350-352, which are 
based upon a thousand lines in each play. 



40 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

In the trochees at the beginning of the line, he 
says, we have the striking phenomenon that Henry V. 
as well as Macbeth falls behind Errors, a fact which is 
best explained by the increased overflowing of the 
verses; the enjambernent would be obscured if a stressed 
end-syllable of one line were followed by a first syllable 
of the next also accented. On the other hand, the 
trochees after the caesura form a steadily rising column 
in the four plays, which shows that in the later dramas 
the caesura becomes more and more the principal pause. 
If you omit the trochees which are least felt {i. e., those 
at the beginning), you have this steady progression : 
Errors, 75; Mer'. of Ven., 80; Henry V., 97; Macbeth, 
160. What was not clear in the sum total of the 
trochees we recognize clearly here, viz., that the use of 
the trochee as a rhythmical counterstroke grew with 
the years; that, therefore, with the trochees, too, the 
same evidence is before us as with the anapaests and 
the monosyllabic feet. 

C. Feminine Syllables. 

However the poet might diversify the internal 
structure of the line, there was always a strongly stress- 
ed end-syllable, against which he must come with a 
jolt every minute. The ring of that end-syllable in his 
mind (long associated with the enforcement of rime) 
was a constant temptation to " bumbast out" the blank 
verse with unnecessary phrases, repetitions and plays 
on words. 1 We must now consider by what devices 
Shakespeare overcame this champion of dulness, this 
chief foe of liberty and variety. 

One thing he did was to add an unstressed syllable 

1 As in Richard III., II. 2.71-79, Love's Labour's Lost, III. 1. 196, 197. 
ee Corson, p. 54. 



FEMININE SYLLABLES 41 

after the last accent, which was thus modified by a 
" kind of grace-note x ," e. g., 

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his val(our. 2 (III. 1.53.) 
By an extension of the peculiarity we sometimes 
have two such extra syllables : 

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical. (I. 3.139.) 
The extra syllable may even appear at the end of an 
Alexandrine : 

The sleepers of the house? speak, speak ! O gentie la(dy. (II. 3.88.) 
That the comparative frequency of these "femi- 
nine endings," as they are called, indicates, in a general 
way, the date of a play was first pointed out by Charles 
Bathurst in his classic work on Shakespeare's versifica- 
tion (1857). 3 Stating the fact broadly, if the feminine 
endings are few we may infer that the play is of early 
composition; if they are numerous, that the play be- 
longs to the period of mature authorship. 

Compare two typical passages, in each of which a 
woman scolds a man. The first is from an early play, 
The Comedy of Errors, II. 2.112-120: 

1 Dowden, p. 43. 

2 Abbott says (§455) that ' the extra syllable is very rarely a monosyl- 
lable, still more rarely an emphatic monosyllable.' Only the latter part of this 
statement is true. Unemphatic monosyllables are common enough as feminine 
endings. Fletcher will use even an emphatic and important word after the 
final stress. See Symonds, p. 35. 

3 See Bathurst, pp. 3, 147, 149. Roderick (See T. N. S. S. 1874, Appendix, 
p. 66) first noticed the peculiarity in his remarks on Henry VIII., which were 
printed in Thomas Edwards' Canons of Criticism (1758). Malone quoted 
Roderick (See T. N. S. S. 1874, p. 443), but seemed, poor man, to be doubtful 
of the fact ! S. Hickson (in The Westminister and Foreign Quarterly Review, 
No. xcn, and No. lxxvii., for April 1847; reprinted in T. N. S. S. 1874, 
Appendix, p. 25), and James Spedding (in The Gentleman s Magazine for August 
1850 ; reprinted in the same volume, Appendix, p. 1) used this test for separ- 
ating Shakespeare's and Fletcher's parts in The Two Noble Kinsmen and 
Henry VIII., respectively. This was the first test to be used with arithmeti- 
cal precision (Spedding, p. 14), and to be so applied to all the plays (Hertz- 
berg, in Jahrbuch XIII, p. 252). 



4 2 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown : 
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects ; 
I am not Adriana nor thy wife. 
The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow 
That never words were music to thine ear, 
That never object pleasing to thine eye, 
That never touch were welcome to thy hand, 
That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste, 
Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee. 
In all the forty-line speech of Adriana from which 
this is quoted there are but two feminine endings 
(11. 121, 141). Compare with this Paulina's speech in 
The Winter s Tale, III. 2. 184-193 : 

For all 
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of(it. 
That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas noth(ing ; 
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant 
And damnable ingrateful : nor was't much 
Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's hon(our, 
To have him kill a king ; poor trespasses, 
More monstrous standing by : whereof I rec(kon 
The casting forth to crows thy baby-daugh(ter 
To be or none or little. 

I count in all 429 feminine endings in Macbeth, or 
26. 9% of the blank-verse lines. The results of Konig 
and Fleay are approximately the same. Of these 429, 
fourteen are triple endings, viz, I. 3.129, 139; I. 4.26; 
I. 5-49! II. 1.3; II. 3.114, I20: II. 4<IO; HI 1. 81; IIl| 
2. 11; III. 4.2,37; IV. 3.66; V.4.6. Moreover, thirty- 
four of the short lines end with a feminine syllable. 

It will be observed from the Table that the feminine 
endings are only an approximate chronological test, and 
that the percentages do not form a steadily rising col- 
umn. After 1599, Shakespeare appears always to have 
employed at least one feminine ending to every five 
lines; towards the conclusion of his career he used as 
many as one in three; and, beginning with Macbeth 



FEMININE S YLLA BLE S 



43 



TABLE OF FEMININE ENDINGS. 1 



Plays 



Love's Labour's Lost 
Comedy of Errors . . 
Merchant of Venice. 

Henry V 

Hamlet 

Othello 

Lear 

Macbeth 

Ant. and Cleo. . . . 
Winter's Tale. . . . 
Tempest 



Total (Fleay) % (Konig) 



26 
178 
325 
336 
528 
679 
580 
420 
666 
675 
472 



7-7 
16.6 

17.7 
20.5 
22.6 
28.1 
28.5 
26.3 
26.5 
32.9 
35-4 



(Fleay) 


fo (Hertzberg) 


4- 


4- 


15.4 


12. 


17.4 


15. 


17.5 


18.37 


22.4 


25. 


28.5 


26. 


28. 


27.36 


26.3 


23-47 


25.7 


26. 


34-7 


32.5 


34- 


32. 



and omitting the three plays of mixed authorship, 
Timon, Pericles and Henry VIII., the increase of the 
feminine endings does in fact follow the precise order 
of the last six dramas. 2 Before 1599, however, the 
plays exhibit the most surprising divigations from a 
uniform progression, the poet's unconscious attitude 
toward the end-syllable seeming to alter with each new 
composition. These variations are, doubtless, in many 
instances to be connected with variations in the amount 
of rime. There are comparatively few double rimes in 
English, and so when the dramatic poet is making fre- 
quent use of the couplet, his blank verse will feel the in- 
fluence. Many rimes imply few feminine endings, and 
vice versa} 

Feminine endings never became with Shakespeare a 
mere matter of formal and deliberate adoption, even 
though in The Tempest and The Winter s Tale they are 

1 In this Table the first (or total) column is from Fleay's Tables in 
Ingleby ; the second is from Konig, p. 132 ; the fourth from Jahrbuch XIII, 
p. 252. I take Konig's list of percentages to be the most accurate ; note the 
genera] parallelism between his list and that which I have figured out from 
Fleay's totals (third column). See what Fleay says about Hertzberg in Ing- 
leby, p. 58. 

2 That is, if one follows K5nig. 

3 Compare Loves Labour s Lost and Midsummer-Night's Dream with 
Comedy of Errors and Richard III. 



44 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

almost the normal rhythm. With Fletcher, on the other 
hand, they are a distinguishing mannerism. 1 Through 
page after page he voluntarily substitutes for the stan- 
dard decasyllables lines with one, two, and three extra 
end-syllables, 2 and so imparts to his verse a languorous, 
luxurious retardation, surfeiting by its sweetness, and 
fatiguing by its monotony. But Shakespeare's versifi- 
cation is the least mannered of all poets; it is evolved 
from an inner law ol harmony and is always thoroughly 
organic. When Shakespeare used feminine endings 
it was not because he thought them an adornment, 
but because his " feeling instinctively reached out for 
them " 3 at moments when they would give a desir- 
able effect. Consequently the feminine endings are un- 
evenly distributed among the scenes of the same play. 

With the aid of critical dicta supplied by Abbott 
and Mayor 4 I have determined in Macbeth some of the 
peculiar effects produced by a multiplication of feminine 
endings. Often, of course, their influence, though felt, 
is too vague to be expressed in precise words, but at 
times it becomes a definite and definable quantity. 

(a.) Lines are appropriately feminine in the polite 
and graceful conversation of society. The place in 
Macbeth where the feminine endings are most numerous 
is the dialogue between Duncan and his hostess on the 
arrival of the court at Inverness. (I. 6. 10-31.) 

Duncan. See, see, our honour'd hostess ! 

The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, 
Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you 
How you shall bid God 'ild us for your pains, 
And thank us for your trouble. 

1 See G. C. Macaulay, Francis Beaumont, pp. 43, 44 ; J. A. Symonds 
pp. 34ff. 

2 See Alden, p. 226. 

3 Corson, p. 78. 

4 Abbott in T. N. S. S. 1874, p. 75 ; Mayor. 175. 



FEMININE SYLLABLES 45 

Lady Macbeth. All our service 

In every point twice done, and then done double, 
Were poor and single business to contend 
Against those honours deep and broad wherewith 
Your majesty loads our house : for those of old, 
And the late dignities heap'd up to them, 
We rest your hermits. 

Duncan. Where's the thane of Cawdor? 

We coursed him at the heels, and had a purpose 
To be his purveyor : but he rides well ; 
And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him 
To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess, 
We are your guests to-night. 

Lady Macbeth. Your servants ever 

Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt, 
To make their audit at your highness' pleasure, 
Still to return your own. 

Duncan. Give me your hand ; 

Conduct me to mine host : we love him highly, 
And shall continue our graces towards him. 
By your leave, hostess. 

Here in twenty-two lines there are fourteen femi- 
nine endings. The straining after excessive courtesy 
voices itself in the lingering grace of the feminine 
rhythm. Perhaps this is the reason why Fletcher, 
preeminently the poet of society, is so fond of it. 1 

(b). In moments of excitement, when most of the 
rules are disregarded, the extra end-syllable naturally 
makes its appearance. In the broken frenzy of Mac- 
beth's address to the ghost (III. 4. 100-106) there are 
three feminine endings; compare with this the subdued 
reflectiveness of 11. 75-82 in the same scene, where there 
are none. 

(c). On the other hand the feminine ending is rare 

1 The long-drawn-out effect of Fletcher's lines is due partly to the fact that 
a large per cent, of his feminine-ending verses are end-stopped. Contrast in 
this respect Shakespeare's practice. (See Browne, p. 21.) 



46 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

when the conversation is familiar, when there is an ex- 
tended narrative, or when the poet permits himself a 
full flight of pure poetry, — that is, when the regular 
verse-form would readily flow from the pen. For ex- 
amples, see Lennox's speech in III. 6.1-23, two feminine 
endings, both proper names; Ross's report to Macbeth 
in I. 3.89-99, no feminine endings. In Act I., Scene 2, 
where the Sergeant and Ross narrate the fortunes of 
the fight, the feminine endings average less than one in 
five. There is no precise counterpart in Macbeth to 
Mercutio's Queen Mab speech or Horatio's " A mote it 
is to trouble the mind's eye" {Hamlet, I.1.112 ff.), the 
instances cited by Mayor and Abbott for poetic regu- 
larity. 

(d). In soliloquies that are quietly meditative, hen- 
decasyllabics are infrequent \cf. , c. g., Macbeth's " sear 
and yellow leaf" soliloquy, V. 3.20-28, one feminine 
ending], but when the throught is agitated or vehemently 
argumentative, they are prevalent. This is strikingly 
illustrated by the soliloquy in I. 7.1-28. The first 
eighteen lines have seven double endings, because 
Macbeth is in feverish debate with himself; then comes 
the trumpet-tongued outburst of poetry, with the return 
of a feminine ending (1. 26), only after Macbeth has re- 
turned to self-examination. See also I. 5. 16-31: the 
first eleven lines express the acme of excitement, and of 
them six lines end femininely ; the last five develop a 
single poetic idea and are perfectly regular. In II. 
1 .33-64, the feminine endings are most rare in the poetic 
passage beginning " Now o'er the one half-world " 
(11. 49-60); in III. 1.48-72, they are most rare in the 
poetic passage beginning " Then prophet-like " (11. 59-72). 
These cases are enough to establish the point beyond 
doubt. 



FEMININE SYLLABUS 47 

One rises, therefore, from a study of the feminine 
endings with renewed reverence for the minute per- 
fection of Shakespeare's art and renewed faith in the 
organic character of his verse. One feels that he called 
upon this device with reason, for the sake of dramatic 1 
variety, and called upon it increasingly with the years, 
as his instinct became unshackled and unerring. 

Corresponding to the feminine ending, there may 
be one or two light syllables added before the cassural 
pause. These syllables might, of course, be counted 
as parts of trisyllabic feet, 2 but the analogy between the 
terminal pause and the internal pause of the line, 
especially when Shakespeare was composing, not by 
the single verse, but in rhythmical paragraphs, leads 
one rather to consider them as extra, or feminine, 
syllables. 

One syllable : 

Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! || I would thou couldst! 

(II. 2.74.) 

But mine own safeties. || You may be rightly just. (IV. 3.30.) 
Two syllables: 

Contending 'gainst obed(ience, || as they would make. (II. 4.17.) 

In restless ec(stasy. || Duncan is in his grave. (III. 2.22.) 
In an Alexandrine : 

Like syllable of dol(our. || What I believe, I'll wail. (IV. 3.8. 
Combined with feminine ending: 

The thane of Caw(dor, || began a dismal con(flict. (I. 2.53) 

The air is dedicate. || See, see, our honour'd hos(tess! (I. 6.10) 

1 I say " dramatic " rather than "poetic". Bathurst (p. 14S) notes that 
feminine endings are very rare in Cowper and Milton ; Mayor's Tables (p. 186) 
show that the same is true for the non-dramatic works of Tennyson. But 
they are more numerous in Samson Agonistes than in Paradise Lost, and in 

Queen Mary than in Idylls of the King. (See Alden, p. 233). They are 

characteristic of epic rather than dramatic blank verse. 

2 See the debate on this point between Ellis and Mayor, in Mayor, pp. 
153, 168, 17S. 



48 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

I count in all eighty-nine cases of the feminine 
cassura; of these, there are eight which have two sylla- 
bles, viz., in addition to the the three examples cited 
above, III. 1.80, III. 4.121, IV. 1.89, IV. 3.239. 1 
Twenty-eight lines have feminine syllables both at the 
cassura and at the end. 

The comparative frequency of these mid-line extra- 
syllables has been made a verse-test by Fleay, and seems 
to separate effectively the plays of the Second Period 
from those of the Third. 2 

TABLE OF FEMININE OESURAL SYLLABLES. 



Play 


Number of 
Syllables 


Play 


Number of 
Syllables 


Play 


Number of 
Syllables 


Love's Lab. Lost 
Com. of Errors . 
Mer. of Ven. . . 
Henry V. . . . 


O 

O 

32 

25 


Hamlet 
Othello 
Lear 
Macbeth 3 


78 
208 
131 

78 


Ant. and Cleo. 
Winter's Tale. 
Tempest 


I20 
60 
33 



D. End-Stopped and Run-On Lines. 

After all the feminine syllables do not remove the 
real difficulty of the troublesome emphatic ending of the 
line, because they do not of themselves relieve the final 
pause. Probably the most important of all the changes 
which worked themselves out in Shakespeare's metrical 
habit was the decrease of end-stopped lines. A line is 
said to be " end-stopped," when the voice naturally 
rests at its conclusion. 

The presence of the pause is not necessarily indi- 



1 See Wagner, in Anglia XIII., p. 357. 

2 Contrast twenty-two in As You Like It, twenty-eight in Twelfth Night, 
thirty five in Julius Caesar, with ninety-eight in Measure for Measure, and 
208 in Othello. 

3 One reason why my count of these syllables yields a larger result than 
Fleay's is the fact that several lines which he reckons Alexandrines I analyze 
in this manner. 



END-STOPPED AND R UN-ON LINES 49 

cated by a punctuation mark 1 ; it is sufficient for the 
purpose that the last word should be dwelt upon ; the 
pause may be rhetorical, rather than strictly grammat- 
ical. 2 Thus, I. 3. 141 is an end-stopped line: — 

Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 

But what is not. 

A line is said to be " run-on," when the sense and 
the voice are carried forward without a pause into the 
line that follows. 

The alteration in Shakespeare's manner with regard 
to enjambement can be best disclosed by the juxtaposi- 
tion of passages from an early and a late play. 
King John will furnish an example of the youthful end- 
stopping : — 

Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me, 

For I am sick and capable of fears, 

Oppress'd with wrongs and therefore full of fears, 

A widow, husbandless, subject to fears, 

A woman, naturally born to fears ; 

And though thou now confess thou didst but jest, 

With my vex'd spirits I cannot take a truce, 

But they will quake and tremble all this day. 

What doest thou mean by shaking of thy head ? 

Why dost thou look so sadly on my son ? 

What means that hand upon that breast of thine ? 

Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum, 

Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds ? 

Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words ? 

Then speak again ; not all thy former tale, 

But this one word, whether thy tale be true. 

(III. 1. 11-26.) 
One feels in reading lines like these that the poet 

1 See Seccombe and Allen, The Age of Shakespeare, Vol. II., p. 113. 

2 An attempt was made by the Tests Committee of the St. Petersburg 
Shakespeare Circle {Engl. Stud. Ill, p. 473) to substitute a purely gramma- 
tical test for the phonetic one hitherto used, but the attempt was hardly suc- 
cessful. See Konig's comments, p. 109, footnote. 



50 THE ME THE OF MA CBE TH 

was saying not altogether what he would, but what he 
could. A passage from Macbeth will illustrate the gain 
in rapidity, variety, vivacity, and ease, which accom- 
panied the increase of enfambement. 

Macduff, this noble passion, 
Child of integrity, hath from my soul 
Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts 
To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth 
By many of these trains hath sought to win me 
Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me 
From over-credulous haste : but God above 
Deal between thee and me ! for even now 
I put myself to thy direction, and 
Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure 
The taints and blames I laid upon myself, 
For strangers to my nature. I am yet 
Unknown to woman, never was forsworn, 
Scarcely have coveted what was mine own, 
At no time broke my faith, would not betray 
The devil to his fellow and delight 
No less in truth than life : my first false speaking 
Was this upon myself. 

(IV. 3.114-131.) 

It is commonly stated 1 that the progression of en- 
jambement in the several plays, indicating as it does an 
indeliberate change of habit, and not, like rime, de- 
pending upon voluntary choice, is the most regularly 
continuous of all the progressions, and that, therefore, 
the enjambement-test is the most valuable. According- 
ly I expected to find here, upon investigation, chrono- 
logical evidence nearly, if not perfectly, conclusive. I 
was disappointed. The enjambement-tQst may, indeed, 
be better fitted than the others for general application 
to Shakespeare's whole career, but it serves only to in- 



1 See e.g., Dowden, p. 39; Furnivall in T. N. S. S. 1874, p. 31 (foot- 
note) ; Ingram, same vol., p. 455 ; Bathurst, p. 2 ; Konig, p. 135. 



END-STOPPED AND R UN-ON LINES 51 

dicate groups, not the order of plays within the groups. 
Two counts of the run-on lines have been made. One 
was accomplished by Dr. Furnivall, whose name is 
identified with this test because of the prominence to 
which he raised it 1 ; but Furnivall counted only eight 
plays 2 , and committed the palpable mistake of including 
rime-lines in his ratios. 3 Enjambement in the couplet is 
a very different thing from enjambement in blank verse, 
much more difficult and infrequent. 4 The other count, 
made by Konig for all the dramas, bases scientific re- 
sults upon a loose aesthetic distinction 5 , but I accept 
his figures as consistent and consistency is the main 
point in such matters. My own reckoning of the run- 
on lines in Macbeth yields a total considerably less than 
his, vis. 470, or 29.4% of the blank-verse lines; but 



1 It was first noticed by Malone (177S), and was worked out with ingenuity 
by Bathurst (1857). See p. 2 of his delightful little book, and the remarks on 
the several plays. 

2 Viz., Love's Labour s Lost, Comedy of Errors, T-wo Gentlemen, Tem- 
pest, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale (See Leopold Shakspere, p. xx ; Konig, p. 
I33). Henry VIII. (T. N. S. S. 1874, app., p. 24) and Two Noble Kinsmen 
{ib., p. 65). 

3 See Konig, p. 133 (footnote) ; Fleay in Ingleby, p. 60, Rule 3. 
* See Alden, pp. 1S4 ff., 437 ft". 

5 This distinction is drawn on p. ioq. It is between the mild enjambe- 
ment which makes allowance for the verse in its rhythmical signification, and 
the rough enjambement whicn overflows the metrical pause. Thus, in I. 
4.22, 23, — 

The service and the loyalty I owe, 
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part 
Is to receive our duties ; — 
the first line has the mild enjambement, the second has the rough. It is only 
the latter (generally corresponding with Furnivall's "run-on line") for which 
Shakespeare shows diminishing aversion, and which, therefore, is chronolog- 
ically determinative. But Konig would include in the latter class lines like 
III. 1. 126 and III. 4.43, where the pauses after lord and sir surely make the 
lines end-stopped. 



52 



THE METRE OF MACBETH 



my definition of the term " run-on " is more narrow and 
rigorous. 

TABLE OF RUN-ON LINES. 1 



Play 


Per Cent, of Blank Verse 


Per Cent, of Verse-Lines 




18.4 
12.9 

21.5 
21.8 
23.1 
19.5 

29-3 
36.6 

43-3 
37-5 
4i-5 


5-2 

8.5 










Macbeth 

Winter's Tale 


32. 
24.8 



According to Konig's figures Shakespeare's use of 
the unstopped line took a jump with Lear (of 9.8 %,) 
another with Macbeth (of 7.3 $&), and still another with 
Antony and Cleopatra (of 6.7 %). He was rapid- 
ly breaking away from the confinement of end- 
pauses, because with a large majority of end-stop- 
ped lines he could not make narrative fluent or conver- 
sation rapid. Yet an over-abundance of run-on lines 
perhaps makes the phrasing too intricate, the rhythm 
too prosaic, for very deep and active tragedy. 2 The 
prevalence of such lines is one of the distinguishing 



1 The first column is from Konig, p. 133 ; the second is from Furnivall 
(Leopold Shakspere, p. xx), the figures having been converted from ratios to 
per cents. 

2 Perhaps one ought to comment here upon the fact that not only does the 
total number of stopped lines fall off, but also the use of many of them in suc- 
cession. K5nig (p. 105) cites Two Gentlemen, IV. 4. 184-210 (twenty-seven 
lines, one enjambemeni), King John, III. 1.8-39, an d Julius Caesar, I. 2.138- 
158. Later such a long chain of stopped lines is to be found only in Pericles, 
I. 2.1-47 and Henry VIII., II. 1.55-79, botn suspected passages. Conversely, 
in the youthful dramas we have at most five successive run-on lines, and that 
in but two instances (1 Henry VI, IV. 4.2-6, Romeo and Juliet, II. 6.24-28), 
while in Macbethwe have two passages of seven in succession (III. 6.42-48, IV. 
3.1-7) and one of nine (IV. 3.115-123), and later plays have still more extended 
sequences. 



LIGHT AND WEAK ENDINGS 53 

characteristics of Shakespeare's Fourth Period, the 
period of the Romances. 

E. Light and Weak Endings 
The most insistent metrical reason for a Fourth 
Period, however, is the sweeping introduction in these 
last plays of weak monosyllabic endings. Indeed, so 
numerous and characteristic do they grow that the 
period may best take its designation from them as the 
"Weak-Ending Period." The word "weak" is gen- 
eric, covering two degrees of enfeeblement. On some 
of the final monosyllables "the voice can to a certain 
small extent dwell." x They are therefore termed "light" 
endings. To this class belong the pronouns /, thou, you, 
he, she, we, and they, the auxiliaries do, has, shall, may, can, 
and the like, the verbal forms am, be, etc., the relatives 
who, which, what, etc., and a few other words. 2 For 
example, — 

If I say sooth, I must report they were 

As cannons overcharged with double cracks. (I. 2.36) 

There are twenty other cases of light endings in 
Macbeth, as follows: upon* (I. 4.37), be (I. 5.16), been (I. 
7.17), would (I. 7.50), upon (I. 7.69), upon (I. 7.70), but (11. 
1.37), been (III. 1.78), what (III. 1.110), could (III. 1.118), 
he (III. 6.38), might (III. 6.43), be (IV. 1.147), been (IV. 
3.67), may (IV. 3.70), be (IV. 3.73), such (IV. 3.77), been 
IV. 3.86), should (IV. 3.97), hath (IV. 3.189). 

But the " weak " endings par excellence are those 
which "are so essentially proclitic in their character 
(to use a term applied by Hertzberg in dealing with this 

1 See Ingram, in T. N. S. S. 1874, p. 447. 

2 Ingram counts fifty-four light monosyllables, to which the Tests Com- 
mittee of the St. Petersburg Shakespeare Circle {Engl. Stud. III., p. 4S3) 
would add forty. 

3 This dissyllable is added to the list of monosyllables. 



54 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

subject) that we are forced to run them, in pronunciation 
no less than in sense, into the closest connection with 
the opening words of the succeeding line" 1 . These 
winged words embrace monosyllabic prepositions [e. g., 
at, by, for, from, in, of, on, to, with) and conjunctions 
(e. g., and, as, but, if, nor, or, than, that). 2 Two such 
weak endings are commonly reckoned in Macbeth : 

He hath been in unusual pleasure, and 

Sent forth great largess to your offices. (II. 1.13.) 

(Here the Folio reads pleasure, And sent ; Jennens made 
the correction in the lineation.) 

I put myself to thy direction, and 

Unspeak mine own detraction. (IV. 3.122.) 

It is possible, as Professor Parrott has pointed out 
to me, that a change similar to the one made by Jen- 
nens should be adopted in V. 7.22, where otherwise the 
pause after bruited would have to make up for the omis- 
sion of a stressed and an unstressed syllable. The 
rhythm of both this line and the next is certainly im- 
proved if the And is transferred. 

Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune ! and 
More I beg not. 

Professor Ingram 3 distinguished the two groups in 

1 Ingram, p. 447 ; also Jahrbuch XIII., p. 253. 

2 The St. Petersburg Committee (p. 484) try again to substitute a purely 
grammatical test, and to make up a complete list of all possible weak endings. 
They add to Ingram's list (See p. 501) both, down, else, are, hence, lest, like, near, 
next, nigh, off, out, round, save, since, sith, so, still, thence, through, whilst, 
while, up, yet. On the whole they have failed again, because their rules lead 
to a total disregard of the important element of quantity. (See Konig, p. ioo f 
footnote, and Schipper, II. i., p. 291.) This criticism applies also to their ad- 
ditional list of light endings. Some of their points (e. g., 4 and 8 on p. 485) 
seem well taken. 

3 To whom we owe the final elaboration of the test. The weak endings 
were first noticed as a mark of the later plays by Bathurst (p. 3 ; also p. 104). 
The two degrees were discriminated by Craik (p. 39), who also excellently de- 
scribed their effect on the verse (pp. 36, 37). Spedding first insisted upon the 
necessity of counting the weak endings. (T. JV. S. S. 1874, p. 31.) 



LIGHT AND WEAK ENDINGS 



55 



this way : he looked through Milton's two epics and 
Wordsworth's Excursion to see what words of this 
general character they allowed at the ends of their 
lines. Such he made the "light" endings, because he 
knew that the grave non-dramatic verse of these poets 
would never approach "the extreme of the proclitic 
structure". 

With the introduction of weak endings the death 
blow is dealt to the emphatic close of the line. The 
force of freedom could no further go. 

TABLE OF LIGHT AND WEAK ENDINGS. 1 



Plays 


Number of Number of 
Light Weak 


Per Cent, of 
Light 


Per Cent, of 

Weak 


Per Cent. 
Both of 


Love's Labour's Lost 
Comedy of Errors . . 
Merchant of Venice . 
Henry V 

Othello 

Ant. and Cleo. . . . 
Winter's Tale .... 


3 
o 
6 
2 

8 

2 

5 

21 

7i 
57 
42 


o 
o 
I 
o 
o 
o 
I 

2 

28 

43 
25 


.48 

.OO 
•32 
.IO 

• 34 

.08 

•24 

1.30 

2.74 

2.92 
3.00 


.00 
.00 
.05 
.00 
.00 
.OO 
.04 
.12 

1.0S 

2.21 
1.79 


.48 
.OO 

•37 
.10 

•34 
.08 
.28 
1.42 
3.82 
5-13 
4-79 



For somewhere about three-fourths of Shakespeare's 
dramatic career there are very few light endings, and 
only a trace of weak endings. They furnish no 
chronological hints until we come to about the year 
1606, but they are a "very sensitive indicator of Shake- 
speare's latest manner". 2 A wide gap separates the 
light endings of Macbeth from those of all previous plays 



1 From Ingram's Table (7*. N. S. S. 1874, p. 450). The percentages will 
be found to differ slightly from Ingram's because he counted in the pentameter 
rimed lines (See p. 449), as well as blank verse, thus confusing two tests. 
" Rimes and weak endings are incompatible," emphatic syllables being neces- 
sary in the riming words. (Fleay in Ingleby, p. 60, Rule 3). 

2 So Ingram, p. 455. But I cannot agree with Dowden (Primer, p. 41) 
that within the last period this test " serves to indicate nearly the precise order 
in which the plays were written." 



56 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

(twenty-one as against eleven in All 's Well, the highest 
figure preceding). Macbeth thus prepares the way for 
the Weak-Ending Period, and was, in all probability, 
the last play written before it. With this mild fore- 
warning, the poet seems to have thrown himself at once, 
and whole-heartedly, into the practice of light and weak 
endings. Twenty-eight of the latter appear in Antony 
and Cleopatra, forty-four in Coriolamis, fifty-two in 
Cymbeline, while the light endings leap to seventy-one 
in Antony and Cleopatra, sixty in Coriolamis, seventy- 
eight in Cymbeline. No play before Macbeth shows 
more than two weak endings. This, I take it, is by all 
odds the most important piece of metrical testimony in 
regard to the date of Macbeth. On the one hand, the 
comparatively large number of light endings indicates 
emphatically that the play was written after Hamlet, 
Othello, and Lear. On the other hand, the theory of a 
late date for Macbeth (about 1610) is conclusively con- 
troverted by the absolutely small number of weak 
endings and the relatively small number of light endings, 
as compared with Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, 
Cymbeline, The Winter s Tale, and The Tempest. These 
metrical statistics alone, unaided by the evidence of 
style, Shakespeare's dramatic mood, etc., are enough to 
prove that Macbeth cannot belong in the same period as 
the Romances. 1 

Commonly a pause occurs either shortly or imme- 
diately before the final monosyllable, in these light 
and weak endings, after which the verse darts ahead. 



1 See Verity, pp. x, xi. In the case of light and weak endings, as in con- 
nection with ordinary run-on lines, one should note the use of the peculiarity 
in successive lines. Before Macbeth occurrences are always solitary. But upon 
comes at the end of 11. 69 and 70 in I. 7, and instances of two and three in suc- 
cession begin to be frequent in Antony and Cleopatra. See Konig, pp. 106-108. 



SPEECH ENDINGS 



57 



But fear not yet 
To take upon you what is yours : || you may 
Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty. (IV. 3.70). 
The latter part of a line, if it is to be bound into 
a rhythmical unit with the next, must not be too long; 
and so an increase in the number of enjambements is 
accompanied by a shoving back of the caesura toward 
the end of the line. This structure, as Craik 1 has well 
said, conduces to variety and liveliness, and is better 
fitted for the sprightly, varicoloured portrayal of life 
which we have in the Romances than for the massy 
weight of the great tragedies. The "manner of its 
gait" is like Diomed's: — 

He rises on the toe : that spirit of his 
In aspiration lifts him from the earth. 

(Troilus and Cresstda, IV. 5.15, 16) 

TABLE OF CESURAS. 2 



Play 


After ist, 2nd, or 3rd 
Syllable 


Regular Place 

After 4th, or 5th 

Syllable 


After 6th, 7th, 8th, or 
9th Syllable 


Comedy of Errors. . . 
Merchant of Venice . 
Henry V 


I50 

109 

141 

56 


526 
520 
466 
380 


295 
339 

334 

527 



F. Speech Endings. 

The last test to be considered is the Speech-End- 
ing Test. 3 It is really a corollary or buttress of the 
enjambement-test. As Shakespeare composed less and 
less within the bounds of the single line, and more and 
more in rhythmical phrases, and as these phrases came 
to a conclusion at the caesura, and not at the end of the 



1 P. 36. 

2 From Conrad's Table in Jahrbuch XXXI., p. 347, based on a thousand 
lines in each play. 

5 Proposed by Ingram, worked out for twenty plays by Prof. Pulling ( T. 
N. S. S. 1877-1879, p. 457), and for all the dramas by Konig (p. 134). 



58 



THE ME TRE OF MA CBE Til 



verse, so also the speeches of the characters ended in- 
creasingly within the line. The broken structure re- 
moves from the dialogue much of that air of artificiality 
which attaches to the poetic drama. This is well illus- 
trated by Act V., Scene 4: — 

Malcolm. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand 
That chambers will be safe. 

We doubt it nothing. 
What wood is this before us ? 

The wood of Birnam. 
Let every soldier hew him down a bough 
And bear 't before him : thereby shall we shadow 
The numbers of our host, and make discovery 
Err in report of us ? 

It shall be done. 
We learn no other but the confident tyrant 
Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure 
Our setting down before 't. 

'Tis his main hope : 
For where there is advantage to be given, 
Both more and less have given him the revolt, 
And none serve with him but constrained things 
Whose hearts are absent too. 

Let our just censures 
Attend the true event, and put we on 
Industrious soldiership. 

The time approaches 
That will with due decision make us know 
What we shall say we have and what we owe. 
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate, 
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate : 
Towards which advance the war. 

The speech-ending test, though interesting and 
suggestive, is of comparatively little importance as 
strict evidence, because the materials are inadequate. 1 



Menteith. 
Siward. 
Menteith. 
Malcolm. 



Soldiers. 
Siward. 



Malcolm. 



Macduff. 



Siward. 



1 That is to say, the total number of speech endings is not great enough 
for small differences in percentages in the several plays to indicate anything in 
regard to order of composition. See Konig, p. 134. 



SPEECH ENDINGS 



59 



As far as it goes, it seems to place Macbeth nearer to 
Antony and Cleopatra than to Lear. 

TABLE OF SPEECH ENDINGS. 1 





Bail) 


£ wg 




a 






Play 


of Bla 

peeche 
l Middl 
ine 


oW 


4>T3 tA 

EM 

3 U! U 


.a a 
V3 








~"'-~yl 




2: «=; 


8.2 




a 




Per Cen 
Verse 

Ending 
of 


5 83 

fctn.S 


•3 o.-o 




1- 

H 


en 
u 

3 


fa 


Love's Labour's Lost 


IO. 


? 


J 








Comedy of Errors . 


.6 


I.23 


6 


IO 


I 


O 


Merchant of Venice . 


22.2 


17.03 


79 


33 


O 


O 




18.3 


16.09 


43 


18 


O 


O 




5i.6 


30.19 


205 








Othello 


41.4 


26.I 


245 










60.9 


39-°8 


290 










77.2 


40.44 


239 


127 


4 


I 


Ant. and Cleo. . . . 


77-5 


7> 


? 








Winter's Tale . . . 


87.6 


66.93 


340 










84.5 


61.86 


253 









IV. Summary. 

It is convenient to divide Shakespeare's dramatic 
career, as far as it concerns metre, into four parts, to 
which, after the manner of Dowden, we may apply cer- 
tain fanciful catch-words. 

Period I. The Vanity of Rime. This period is 
characterized saliently by its large amount of rime, 
with the attendant trickeries of alternates, sonnets, and 
doggerels. The number of run-on lines, of feminine 
endings, of Alexandrines, and of speeches ending within 
the line, is very small. 2 There are practically no femi- 
nine mid-line syllables, practically no light or weak 



1 The first column is from Konig, p. 134 ; it is decidedly more reliable and 
intelligent than columns two and three, which are from Pulling's Tables, be- 
cause it does not include rimed and one-line speeches in reckoning the per- 
centage. The last three columns are from Jahrbuch, XXXI. p. 340, and show 
how Shakespeare's habit increased of dividing one line among several speeches. 

2 Cf. Fleay, Manual, pp. 131-133, and Schipper, II. i., 296. 



6o 



THE METRE OF MACBETH 



endings. This period extends to 1594; in it fall Love s 
Labour s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentle- 
men of Verona, A Midsummer-Night 's Dream, and Richard 
ILL, 1 the last lacking in rime, but belonging here by 
every other characteristic. 

On the border-line between this group and the next 
is Richard II. 

As a typical example of an early passage in metre 
I select Love's Labour s Lost, I. 1.33-64. 

Biron. I can but say their protestation over ; 

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, 

That is, to live and study here three years. 

But there are other strict observances ; 

As, not to see a woman in that term, 

Which I hope well is not enrolled there ; 

And one day in a week to touch no food 

And but one meal on every day beside, 

The which I hope is not enrolled there ; 

And then, to sleep but three hours in the night, 

And not be seen to wink of all the day — 

When I was wont to think no harm all night 

And make a dark night too of half the day — 

Which I hope well is not enrolled there : 

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, 

Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep ! 

Your oath is pass'd to pass away from these. 

Let me say no, my liege, an if you please : 

I only swore to study with your grace 

And stay here in your court for three years' space. 

You swore to that, Biron, and to the rest. 

By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. 

What is the end of study? let me know. 



King. 
Biron. 



Longaville. 
Biron. 



1 For the sake of simplicity I avoid in this discussion those plays the date 
of composition of which is not fixed, probably because they underwent revision 
in different periods of authorship, vis., Romeo and Juliet, All's Well, and 
Troilus and Cressida, and those in which another hand than Shakespeare's is to be 
discerned, viz., The Taming of the Shrew, I, 2, and 3 Henry VI, Henry 
VIII., Titus Andronicus, Timon, and Pericles. 



SPEECH ENDINGS 61 

King. Why, that to know, which else we should not know. 

Biron. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense ? 

King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. 

Biron. Come on, then; I will swear to study so, 

To know the thing I am forbid to know : 

As thus, — to study where I well may dine, 

When I to feast expressly am forbid ; 

Or study where to meet some mistress fine, 

When mistresses from common sense are hid. 
I 

Period II. The Balance of Power. This period is 
distinguished from the preceding mainly by the dimi- 
nution of riming lines. Prose becomes a vital part of 
the Histories. Enfambement, double endings, caesural 
syllables, and broken speeches increase, but are still in- 
significant. Alexandrines and short lines continue few, 
and light and weak endings are almost undiscoverable. 
The close of this period marks Shakespeare's most even 
and easy balance of thought and metre. The verse's 
internal structure is at the perfection of its melody, and 
the normal foot and normal line are returned to often 
enough to be felt as the units of composition. King 
John, The Merchant of Venice, I and 2 Henry IV., The 
Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V., Much Ado About 
Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar 
(1591-1601) are here included. The last shows some 
of the qualities of the Third Period. 

The famous soliloquy of the King, from 2 Henry IV. , 
III. 1. 4-3 1, will serve as a characteristic instance: — 
How many thousands of my poorest subjects 
Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gende sleep, 
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down 
And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee 
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, 
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 



62 THE ME TEE OF MA CBE TH 

Under the canopies of costly state, 

And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody? 

thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile 

In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch 

A watch-case or a common 'larum-bell? 

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 

In cradle of the rude imperious surge 

And in the visitation of the winds, 

Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 

Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them 

With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds, 

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? 

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose 

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, 

And in the calmest and most stillest night, 

With all appliances and means to boot, 

Deny it to a king ? Then happy low, lie down ! 

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. 

Period III. The Discordant Weight of Thought. This 
period is far removed from its predecessor in the 
matter of Alexandrines and short lines, mid-line-ending 
speeches, and mid-line feminine syllables. The use of 
prose becomes wider and wider in range. 1 Enjambement 
and feminine endings pursue their broken progress up 
the scale. Rime remains on a low level. Light and 
weak endings are still very infrequent. This period is 
short (1603-1605), but in it were written the world's 
greatest romantic tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Lear, with 
the great tragi-comedy, Measure for Measure, and the 
burden of the tragic themes is almost more than the 
metre can uphold. The poet begins to find that his 
packed eagerness of thought and feverish excitement of 
passion are at odds with mere harmony and grace. 

1 On the development of prose in this and the following period see the ad- 
mirable chapter by Seccombe and Allen, in The Age of Shakespeare, vol. II., 
pp. 117 ff. See also J anssen, passim. 






SPEECH ENDINGS 



63 



I take part of the scene between Hamlet and his 
mother as an illustration {Hamlet, III. 4.68-102). 

Hamlet. You cannot call it love ; for at your age 

The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, 

And waits upon the judgement : and what judgement 

Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, 

Else could you not have motion ; but sure, that sense 

Is apoplex'd ; for madness would not err, 

Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd 

But it reserved some quantity of choice, 

To serve in such a difference. What devil was't 

That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind ? 

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, 

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, 

Or but a sickly part of one true sense 

Could not so mope. 

O shame ! where is thy blush ? Rebellious hell, 

If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, 

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, 

And melt in her own fire : proclaim no shame 

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, 

Since frost itself as actively doth burn 

And reason pandars will. 

Queen. O Hamlet, speak no more 

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul ; 
And there I see such black and grained spots, 
As will not leave their tinct. 

Hamlet. Nay, but to live 

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, 
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love 
Over the nasty sty, — 

Queen. O, speak to me no more ; 

These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears ; 
No more, sweet Hamlet ! 

Hamlet. A murderer and a villain ; 

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe 
Of your precedent lord ; a vice of kings ; 
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, 
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, 
And put it in his pocket ! 



64 THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 

Queen. No more ! 

Hamlet. A king of shreds and patches. 

Period IV. The License of Weak Endings. The gen- 
eral carelessness of art which stamps Shakespeare's final 
period (1607-1612) confronts us most strikingly in a 
great crowd of light and weak endings, and only less so 
in the climax of run-on lines and feminine endings. 
Rime has all but vanished. Alexandrines and short 
lines seem, if anything, to recede, but there is no other 
evidence to support Mr. Fleay, 1 who surmises that 
Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, The Win- 
ters Tale, and The Tempest were produced at greater 
leisure, and more carefully polished. Rather let us say 
that the return to Stratford cast upon Shakespeare the 
weight of too much liberty. The poetry is so licentious 
that it is often difficult to distinguish from the chartered 
libertine, prose. 2 

The dialogue between the Queen and Cornelius in 
Cymbeline (I. 5.6-42) will serve as a typical example of 
the metre of this period, all the more typical perhaps 
because it is in no sense a " purple " passage. 

Cornelius. [Presenting a small box. 

But I beseech your grace, without offence, — 
My conscience bids me ask — wherefore you have 



1 Manual, p. 133. 

2 Seccombe and Allen (II., p. 114) print Coriolanus, II. 2.86-96 as prose 
and very justly say, " Written thus this passage is not quite obviously verse, 
and it would be possible for a dull ear to miss its cadences in reading." Of 
Cymbeline, Professor Barrett Wendell says ( William Shakspere, p. 357), 
" Endstopped lines are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of relief 
when a speech and a line end together. Such a phrase as ' How slow his soul 
sail'd on, how swift his ship ' is deliberately made, not a single line, but two 
half-lines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the 
syllables before the metrical regularity of the verse appears. . . . Clearly 
this puzzling style is decadent ; the distinction between verse and prose is 
breaking down." 



SPEECH ENDINGS 



65 



Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds, 
Which are the movers of a languishing death ; 
But though slow, deadly ? 

Queen. I wonder, doctor, 

Thou ask'st me such a question. Have I not been 
Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learn'd me how 
To make perfumes ? distil ? preserve ? yea, so 
That our great king himself doth woo me oft 
For my confections? Having thus far proceeded, — 
Unless thou think'st me devilish — is't not meet 
That I did amplify my judgement in 
Other conclusions ? I will try the forces 
Of these thy compounds on such creatures as 
We count not worth the hanging, but none human, 
To try the vigour of them and apply 
Allayments to their act, and by them gather 
Their several virtues and effects. 

Cornelius. Your highness 

Shall from this practice but make hard your heart : 
Besides, the seeing these effects will be 
Both noisome and infectious. 

Queen. O, content thee. 

Enter Pisanio. 
[Aside] Here comes a flattering rascal ; upon him 
Will I first work ; he's for his master, 
And enemy to my son. How now, Pisanio ! 
Doctor, your service for the time is ended ; 
Take your own way. 

Cornelius. [Aside] I do suspect you madam : 

But you shall do no harm. 

Queen. [To Pisanio"] Hark thee, a word. 

Cornelius. [Aside] I do not like her. She doth think she has 
Strange lingering poisons : I do not know her spirit 
And will not trust one of her malice with 
A drug of such damn'd nature. Those she has 
Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile ; 
Which first, perchance, she'll prove on cats and dogs, 
Then afterward up higher : but there is 
No danger in what show of death it makes, 
More than the locking-up the spirits a time, 
To be more fresh, reviving. 



66 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

Between the last two periods Macbeth is to be 
placed in a sort of dependent isolation, belonging in 
the Third by most of its features, but pointing to the 
Fourth with its generous total of light endings. 



LcfC. 



APPENDIX (>l 



APPENDIX 

By way of Explanation and Addition. 

p. 7, footnote 3. Prose in History was familiar to 
Shakespeare by his work as a reviser of 2 Henry VI., 
where it appears in I. 1, 3, 4; II. 1, 3; IV. 2, 3, 6, 7, 
8, 10, and is notable in the humourous Jack Cade scenes. 
It is rather curious that when it began to write alone 
in Richard III., Richard II, and King John, he did not 
turn to it for comic relief. 

p. 19, footnote 3. Add to the list of rimed penta- 
meter lines III. 5. 12, 21, which are in the midst of 
Hecate's tetrameters. 

p. 35. Add to the list of participles in which the 
e of the ending is sounded: damned (I. 2.14); damned 
(III. 6. 10); charmed (IV. 1.9); charmed (V. 8.12.) 

p. 36. The M. E. form of captain was capitain, 
adopted from late O. F. (14th C.) capitaine. The New 
English Dictionary cites examples of spelling with an i or 
y as late as 1567. Probably the word was still fre- 
quently pronounced as a trisyllable in Shakespeare's 
time. Cf. 3 Henry VI., IV. 7.30, "A wise stout cap- 
tain, and soon persuaded." The French word capitaine 
is used by Shakespeare in Henry V., IV. 4.70. 



68 



THE ME TRE OF MA CBE TH 



TABLES FOR TWENTY-SIX PLAYS. 



Play 



Love's Labour's Lost 

Comedy of Errors 

Two Gentlemen 

Mid. Night's Dream. 

Richard III (F) 

Richard II 

King John 

Merchant of Venice... 

i Henry IV 

2 Henry IV 

Merry Wives (F) 

Henry V 

Much Ado 

As You Like It 

Twelfth Night 

Julius Caesa r 

Measure for Measure. 

Hamlet 

Othello 

Lear 

Macbeth 

Ant. and Cleo 

Coriolanus 

Cvmbeline 

Winter's Tale, 
Tempest 



2785 
1777 

2292 
2166 
3589 

2756 



2570 
2656 
3176 
3446 
3029 
3559 
2825 
2839 
2690 
2477 
2810 

39 2 9 
3316 
3328 
2106 



3059 
34°6 
3339 
3074 
2062 



1022 
226 
659 
493 
63 



617 

1156 
1431 
729 
3278 
2174 



604 
1464 
1857 
2676 

'367 
2105 
1679 
1731 
r|6 

"34 
1200 
661 

8q6 

rs8 



2403 
1872 
1 56 1 
1425 
.•07 
iqi8 
618 
871 
724 
2181 
1470 
2358 
2381 
2072 



2589 
2413 
2528 
1948 
1396 



c 1 



7-7 
16.6 
18.4 

7-3 

19-5 



38.5 



143 
1 j6 



26-3 78 

26.5 

28.4 

30.7 

32-9 

35-4 



18.4 

12.9 

12.4 

13.2 

13 

19-9 



(J -. 

o a 



£p 



17.7 
21.5 
22.8 
21.4 
20.1 
21.8 
19.3 
17. 1 
14.7 
19-3 



3 6-6| 

43-3 ( 
45'9 
46.0 

37-5 

41-5 



s« 



U c 



10. o 

.6 

5-8 

17-3 

_2-9 

7-3 



18.3 

20.7 

21 

36 

2Q-3 



5> 

51 

41.4 

60.9 



77- 





77.51607 
7Q.0 1608 
85.01609 
87.6 1610-1612 
84.5JI6IO-I6II 



Bibliography 
Of books and articles used and referred to. 
The references to the text of Shakespeare are to the Globe Edition ; of 
Middleton, to Bullen's Edition in eight volumes. 

Editions of Macbeth : — 

Clarendon Press : W. G. Clark and W. A. Wright : pp. x, xi. 

Arden : E. K. Chambers : Appendix on Metre. 

Pitt Press : A. W. Verity : Introduction, and Appendix on Metre. 

Longmans' English Classics : J. M. Manly : pp. xxxii-xxxv. 

Leopold : F. J. Furnivall : pp. xix, xx, exxiii. 

Variorum : H. H. Furness : pp. 259, 303. 

Eversley : C. H. Herford : Introduction. 

Elizabethan: Mark H. Liddell: p. 165. 

Works in English : — 

Charles Bathurst : Remarks on the Differences in Shakespeare s Versi- 
fication in Different Periods of his Life. 



BIBLIOGRA PH Y 69 

George L. Craik : The English of Shakespeare : pp. 28-43. 

William Sidney Walker : Shakespeare's Versification : p. 227. 

E. A. Abbott : A Shakespearean Grammar : pp. 328-429. 

Frederick Gard Fleay : Shakespeare Manual : pp. 121-138, 239-261. 

Frederick Gard Fleay : Introduction to Shakespearean Study : p. 36. 

Frederick Gard Fleay : Life and Work of Shakespeare : p, 239. 

C. M. Ingleby : Shakespeare, The Man and the Book : Vol. II., ch. II., 
pp. 40-49 ; also ch. III., pp. 50-141, by F. G. Fleay. 

Edward Dowden : Shakspere Primer : pp. 39-46. 

Hiram Corson : Introduction to Shakespeare : pp. 51-82. 

John Addington Symonds : Blank Verse : Section II., "The History 
of Blank Verse". 

Joseph B. Mayor : Chapters on English Metre : pp. 146-183. 

Thomas Seccombe and J. W. Allen : The Age of Shakespere : Vol. II., 
pp. 111-122. 

George H. Browne: Notes on Shakspere's Versification : pp. 9, 21. 

Raymond M. Alden : English Verse : pp. 55, 184 ff., 226, 437 ff. 

Francis B. Gummere : Handbook of Poetics : p. 142. 

Alexander Schmidt : Shakespeare Lexicon : Vol. II., p. 141 3. 

Hallam Tennyson : Alfred, Lord Tennyson, A Memoir: Vol. II., p. 14. 

G. C. Macaulay : Francis Beaumont : pp. 43, 44. 

Barrett Wendell : William Shakspere : p. 357. 

English Articles in Periodicals : — 

Transactions of the New Shakspere Society 1874-75 : passim ; especially 
the discussion on Fleay's First Paper (pp. 17-37) and the article by J. K. In- 
gram " On the ' Weak Endings of Shakspere ' " (pp. 442-464). 

The same, 1877-79, PP- 457, 458 : F. S. Pulling : " The ' Speech-Ending 
Test ' Applied to Twenty of Shakspere's Plays." 

The same, 1880-6, pp. 523-562 : Henry Sharpe : "The Prose in Shak- 
pere's Plays." 

Englische Studien : Band III., pp. 473-503 : J. Harrison, J. Goodlet and 
R. Boyle : " Report of the Tests Committee of the St. Petersburg Shakespeare 
Circle." 

Transactions of the Philological Society, June 1876 : article by A. J. 
Ellis. 

Works in German : — 

Goswin Konig : Der Vers in Shaksperes Dramen : passim. 

J. Schipper : Englische Metrik, II., i., pp. 287-316. 

V. F. Janssen : Die Prosa in Shakespeares Dramen : passim. 

German Articles in Periodicals : — 

Jahrbtuh der Deutchen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, Vol. V., pp. 227-273 : N. 
Delius : " Die Prosa in Shakespeare's Dramen." 



70 THE METRE OF MACBETH 

The same, XIII., pp. 248-266: W. Hertzberg : " Metrisches, Gram- 
matisches, Chronologiscb.es zu Shakespeares Dramen." 

The same, XXVIII., pp. 177-272 : Julius Heuser : "Der Coupletreim in 
Shakespeares Dramen." 

The same, XXXI, pp. 318-353: Hermann Conrad: " Metrische Unter- 
suchungen zur Feststellung der Abfassungszeit von Shakespeares Dramen." 

Anglia, XIII, pp. 353-357 : A. Wagner : " Metrische Bemerkungen zu 
Shakespeares Macbeth". 



314.77-6 



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